


The Cylon Queen

by natalexx



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-24
Updated: 2006-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalexx/pseuds/natalexx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Occupation: The ordeal of New Caprica. What's more important: survival or resistance?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG-13 for non-explicit sex and violence. Warning is for sex that I consider "coerced non-con."  
> Genre: Gen/het -- Kara and Laura are the central characters, but most everyone left on New Caprica makes an appearance.  
> Pairings: Kara/Leoben (sort of), Kara/Anders (referenced), Cally/Tyrol and Six/Baltar, Tigh/Ellen (peripheral).  
> Spoilers: Picks up after "Lay Down Your Burdens" pt 2. This is partially based around season 3 rumor/spoilers! Also expect references to events from seasons 1-2.
> 
> Thanks to Ron Moore's comments that New Caprica would be like Vichy France, credit for some of my ideas should go to historical records--particularly "Occupation: The Ordeal of France" by Ian Ousby. The title of this fic was inspired by Joan D. Vinge's "Snow Queen," in which the queen's consort was an anonymous masked offworlder called Starbuck. No similarities other than title. I've also been told my title is off-putting, so thank you to anyone who gets past it and apologies for my weird brain.

"Laura? Laura." She's been saying her name for awhile. Laura Roslin pulls herself back out of her thoughts, feels the bite of the wind on her cheeks and tugs her heavy shawl up around her face.

"The children are asking questions," Maya says. "They're asking about the Cylons."

"They're frightened," Laura suggests, softly. She almost smiles; it's such a simple thing to be afraid. It's so much harder to combine fear with survival tactics.

Maya hesitates, as if she's not sure she wants to have this conversation. "They're asking whether the Cylons are just people dressed up in costumes. Especially the little ones."

Laura looks away from her, across the township. She contemplates life without the Cylons and tries to imagine they'd never existed. No one ever would have considered settling for this horrible little planet, that's for certain.

"It almost seems kinder to just let them believe what they wish for now." Laura meets Maya's eyes, and in them she sees the same quiet longing she feels. The children are already living in harsher conditions than any of them want to think about. Can they teach them about freedom and ideals when they have no examples to show them in reality?

"No," Laura says after a moment. "I refuse to teach these children Cylons aren't scary." She swallows and feels her throat try to cave in. "They're scary as hell. The second we forget that, we've given them half the victory." It becomes harder to find the voice she reluctantly adopted as president. The firmness balanced with the confidence that she would be heard fades slowly in this place where every voice is like another and everyone practices a wait-and-see policy. It becomes harder to speak of hope to the hopeless when she herself can't see it.

Laura clears her throat and manages a smile for Maya. She is ridiculously, incredibly grateful for this woman. Laura learned not so long ago, though it feels like a lifetime, she functions best when she has an assistant. She is nothing if she cannot be an example to her students. She takes Maya's arm. "Let us not be teachers of Cylon revisionism," she says, as though they are playing at revolution. "Right here and now, we'll tell the next generation something true."

Maya smiles back, generous and too kind, and leans into her arm. "And later, perhaps your generation will listen too?"

"You know me too well," Laura admits, and briefly her mind jumps naturally to Bill Adama. Her longing for Bill, even at cross-purposes the weight that always balanced her schemes, is never far and never more real than when she's awake at night and wondering whether he'll come back for the remnants of the weakest, most foolish part of humanity. Most of the time she's convinced, just as she convinces the resistance, that he will--and most of the time she's glad he's not here because everyone needs to believe if he would only come back, they wouldn't have to live with this. Everyone needs to look to the sky and expect to see something someday that isn't a Cylon ship. Everyone needs to believe home still exists.

Maya pauses before they re-enter the tent. "I think we're fortunate that we're still teaching the children at all."

"Yes," Laura agrees. Everything seems to be a slow process toward a sudden end. Even the Cylon occupation seemed inevitable, surprised as everyone seemed when they realized they weren't all instantly killed.

* * *

The tent where they're holding the meeting will be removed in the morning. The Cylons are improving the town. With the material they've provided, Tyrol's crews have already put up rows of buildings that don't fall down when the wind picks up, and the people have been moved into them with very little protest. Laura can't blame them. No one's forgotten that a tent was never meant for a permant residence. The Cylons looked at New Caprica and immediately solved most their problems. In exchange for shelter, a warm bed, work that's hard but has a purpose, and food that's rationed but reliable, swearing allegiance to the Cylons seemed more palatable. Baltar's presence on the so-called Board of Cylon Governance made it that much easier to accept.

They have been gathering in fewer and fewer numbers in the past few weeks. Resistance to the Cylons once included everyone: every man, woman, and child considered it an obvious battle of humans against them. The nights have grown colder and the families stay in, and suddenly it's a matter of comfort over patriotism to colonies that doesn't exist. They are easier to spot now that they are only a hand-full, most of them ex-military or political, but the meetings represent their desperation to cling to resistance itself.

Laura goes to every one. She may not be president any longer, but she there's still something she represents.

Tonight the tent is quiet when she enters. Everyone glances up anxiously, then back to their whispered arguments when she unwinds her bulky scarf from her head. She moves directly toward the gas lantern someone's brought from home. It puts out enough heat for everyone to cluster around it, and her hands are so cold they've gone numb. Not that that's unusual here. Her knuckles are white from old chapped skin.

Across from her, Samuel Anders is sitting mute, arms folded around his chest, with his head leaning against the support pole of the tent. She smiles at him. "Knock that over and you'll bring this thing down on our heads," she jokes.

He doesn't smile. "Think it's too late for that," he remarks. She knows very well how he feels. Four months ago, he was close enough to death that the Cylon invasion had barely gotten him out of bed. He is only alive because of Cylon medicine. He'd lost his wife instead.

"She could still be alive," Laura tells him, knowing they're empty words. But the others have given up saying them.

But she's surprised by his answer. "I know she is," he says. She surveys him carefully. She still knows very little about Anders, and what she does comes from observation. She knows he loves two things: the game of pyramid, and Kara Thrace. He knows more about surviving Cylon control than anyone else here because he lived on Caprica for months after the nuclear attacks. Every meeting like this, he comes prepared with a careful plan and a recon map. He spends his time watching their Cylon captors. Every meeting he proposes an attack and every meeting there are too many good reasons why they can't.

"Have you seen her?" Laura asks. Despite herself, she feels a surge of hope deep down. Starbuck. The young woman seems to embody hope. Laura's watched her create it from thin air.

He shakes his head. "Until I see her body, she is."

She feels sorry for him and grateful to him in equal parts. She doesn't know when she became such a believer; it must have been the day she accepted the Prophesies exist. She believes in so much these days she feels the weight of expectation is precarious and ever ready to crush. As far as burdens to be carried, it seems pretty useless. But it's better than laying down.

So she nods firmly at Anders, like she understands where he's coming from. He might be crazy or completely wrong, but he's never faltered once in confidence. She appreciates that in a man.

"Have you brought us another plan?" she asks with a faint smile. She's never claimed to have a military mind. When she looks at the specifics of Anders' plots, she sees numbers and faces and human tears, not dead Cylons or acceptable losses. The others are very reasonable when they point out the logistics. Anders always accepts their criticism rationally. Looking around the tent now, she can only hope one day he'll bring them a good plan, and there will still be men left to carry it out.

Anders sighs and uncrosses his arms slowly. His fingernails have a blue tinge when he hands her a hand-drawn map, on the back of an old plan. "They've set up a training ground on the other side of the trees. Some of them are out regularly, working--"

One of Tyrol's men interrupts loudly, "We pick 'em off a few at a time, what does it matter? They replace 'em just as fast and they know who killed the first bunch. When they take us out, that's it. We don't get a reboot."

Anders glares at him. "I'm not saying we go after them until we have a chance. I just think we should set up surveillance. You have something better to do with your time?"

"Yeah, I do," he responds belligerently. "I can feed my family. I've got a new baby on the way and a house to keep warm with the cold moving in--"

"Just what do you think is going to happen to that baby when the Cylons start gathering them up?"

They all fall silent. Laura feels the cold dread sinking deeper into her stomach. It's something they've avoided bringing up--the Cylon interest in reproduction. She's found herself putting aside the thought herself, often enough.

The other man leans down and gets into Anders face, so close Laura thinks their noses might touch and, probably, freeze together. "You keep your frakking theories to yourself."

"You want to protect your family? You want to rely on the Cylons?" Anders gets to his feet, eyes filled with bitterness. "You're frakking insane, all of you. Have you forgotten?" He turns his gaze on the rest of them, most of them who look like they're ready to sneak back home for warmth if nothing else. "Have you forgotten they're machines and they've killed everyone else? Because I haven't. I sure as frak haven't forgotten they took my wife."

Laura watches the guilt in the other eyes close off at his words. They all know Anders' wife. They all think Starbuck just stuck her nose out too far. Dangerous to let the Cylons know you by name. Better to be another nameless face in a crowd. She turns away quickly, listens to Anders and the other man shove each other a few times before the rest of them disperse without fanfare. Laura closes her eyes. "Is this what becomes of humanity?" she whispers. "We slide out of existence hoping to avoid notice?"

Anders doesn't reply, but she knows he's still there. "I don't give a frak about humanity anymore," he says finally. She knew that. She doesn't resent it; Anders has a mission that no one else shares; and she's a leader without people to guide or anywhere to go. Not for the first time, she wonders if she made the mistake that lead them here. Should she have sacrified principle for the--what? The greater good? She smiles to herself. She's a school teacher. How could she possibly allow herself even the thought.

"There won't be anymore meetings unless we find something to get the others stirred up," she remarks. He doesn't speak and she won't turn around; she waits too long, just sitting there alone, before she straightens her spine and gets up. There's little use in her lingering here. It is cold and she has someone to go home to herself. She's always known that it would be the young and the frightened she would fall back on. She's learned to value those still willing to listen when there's so little she can say.

* * *

It's been months and she's seen the needles but she still doesn't understand how she can sleep. She wakes up with Leoben curled around her back and she doesn't jump away from him. She doesn't even know which Leoben he is; he could be anyone and she'd like to think she can tell the difference but she knows how easy it'd be to switch.

He started sleeping with her a month ago. She didn't fight it, a foreign feeling for her but she feels distant from her self. She knows her body's full of drugs and she'd be useless in a cockpit; she doesn't really remember how it feels to fly. Leoben takes her for long walks, though, and talks in long strings of words, sometimes too much for her when she's drowsy, but she knows he connects everything to nature. He's endlessly delighted by anything real. He likes to touch. He talks about rivers and streams and the Cylon god and she tries to make fun of him but he doesn't care. He holds her like she gave him permission and when she tries to run, a test of will just to place one foot after another, he matches her step.

She frakking hates the Cylons. But she doesn't pull away from his arms.

"Kara," he murmurs against her neck.

"Oh, what was your number again?" she retorts. She is most lucid in the mornings. Lucid enough, at least, to form words that used to come naturally.

She feels him smile against her neck. She shudders away from him, but not far. His hands slide up beneath her breasts and she's moved back to him before she's even aware. "Kara," he repeats, possessively. Like he knows her. Because he does. She closes her eyes. Fighting is all she knows and she doesn't know how to fight this.

His fingers slide over her curves, belly and hips and biceps. They slide into her skin. It's not so much that she forgets he's a machine but that she forgets it matters. If she feels nothing else, she knows she feels hatred for losing control. She thinks she hates Helo most of all: for accepting this. The illusion of touch. But she knows now the Cylons studied love and how to fake it. They took it very serious. Leoben gets inside her like no one else has. She tries to think of anyone else while he's there and she can't. She tries to remind herself it's him and he's who he is but she doesn't care. She's terrified he's trying to get her pregnant. She asks him and he laughs. "If I could get you pregnant, we wouldn't have to rely on insemination and human men falling in love with Cylon females, would we?"

"Well, good, because that'd be frakked up."

"It would or you would?"

She glares at him. He's thinks he's a frakking therapist. "Don't start that again. You know nothing about my mother." He does, of course, because she's told him all of it. She remembers this, vaguely; she remembers wanting to talk at the time. "No child of mine will be raised by Cylons. I can frak it up myself."

Leoben nods as if this makes perfect sense.

He takes her farther away from the building on their walk. She's stronger today and he just keeps walking and leading her along, as if there's somewhere to go and they aren't in the middle of empty land. They come up to a field full of Cylons, covering it like weeds. Leoben grips her arm, and whether she's shaken because of his grip or his help is because she's shaky, it doesn't matter. She looks around them in confusion; a large area has been cleared and it's probably the cleanest spot on this frakking planet, completely filled up of the same faces. There are a hundred skin-jobs: Leobens and Boomers and the ones she only knows as numbers on endless repeat. There comes a point when the sight of a shiny silver machine is almost a relief. "What is going on?" she asks.

She looks at Leoben when he doesn't answer, and he's watching her with that look. When she asks him questions, he acts like they're rhetorical. She's not going to ask again, so she turns her face away from him. Her vision's been fading in and out since they stopped walking, but she can still observe for herself. The skin-jobs are lining up the robot models and seem to be checking machinery and issuing orders that are lost under the gusts of cold wind escaping through the trees. It's difficult to sort out repeating faces by individual tasks, though the blonde women seem to be in command. The Leobens catch her eye, familiar and unsettling, and some of them are watching her in return. They stand facing her, amidst the crowd, indifferent in posture but faces strangely hungry. "What are they doing?" Kara finally asks.

"Preparing for the parade," he answers, at her side.

"Parade?"

"There's one every day."

She feels like she's three jumps behind everything she's supposed to understand, but it's usually better than being sick to her stomach. Still, she only now thinks to complain because it's getting worse. She feels like she's getting battered by G-forces while standing on the ground. "I'm not feeling very--"

* * *

Laura stands at the front of the school tent, gazing out at the street. She finds it harder and harder to focus within, on the students and their tentative lives. Their small colony has become industrious under the Cylon regime. This morning, teams of laborers are laying the streets. Before long they will truly find themselves residents of a new Caprican city: no longer forced to endure the hardhships of patched tents, extreme weather, lack of medicine, or the burden of freedom. "All this has happened before," Laura murmurs.

"And will happen again?" Maya completes the thought, moving near. "Do you really believe that?" she asks softly, her voice troubled. " What about these children? Will they just follow the same path that lead us here?"

Laura glances behind her at the children leaning over their desks, each of their wrinkled foreheads, and notices as she's standing there that Maya's holding her sleeping baby. "Maybe not," she says cautiously. "Maybe something will be different."

Maya opens her mouth to reply, but her eyes catch on something in front of them. Laura turns her head and sees Anders running down the street, partly staggering as he passes the workers without a word and runs right past the game of pyramid on the now-paved court. He's heading right for Maya and her, and Laura steps away from the tent and toward him. His gaze is clearer than it's been since the first week he woke up and could breathe again. She reaches out for his hands.

"I saw her," he says. He's breathing hard, but his voice is steady. "I saw Kara. With the Cylons. In the clearing. Where I told you."

"She's still alive!" Laura doesn't know how to respond to him. He obviously expects this to mean more than it can.

"Yes," he says, and glances around, quick darts of his gaze as though rounding up support. "Now we can make a plan."

Laura pauses a moment before she clarifies, "To rescue her."

He's too smart not to understand her tone. "How can we not at least try?" he demands.

"They would wipe us out," she replies evenly. "It doesn't matter how we come at them. It doesn't matter where we hide. They have nothing to lose."

He yanks his hands away from her grip and stands there staring at her. He says nothing.

"Please don't try to go after her yourself," she finally adds. "Perhaps the odds will change. You are very valuable to any action we might someday be able to take--"

He holds up his palm in recognition of the sheer impotence, swallows and walks away, past her and farther into town. Coming the other direction, she hears the distinctive sound of the Cylons parading through town. The road begins to clear, people moving their work off to the side. Doors and windows begin to close on the buildings. From where she stands, Laura has a clear shot at the rows and rows of Cylons marching toward her. Nothing stands between her and them but the vacated span of the street. She turns and walks over to Maya, waiting anxiously for her to come back inside.

* * *

Kara doesn't float back to consciousness, she jumps. Her body feels like it's a moment behind her mind, so when she opens her eyes and sees Simon leaning over her, she can't scream or lash out. Her throat closes and her eyes water. "She can't breathe," someone says. Hands support her from behind and suddenly she's sitting up. She opens her eyes and they stay open this time. Someone she can't see holds an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. She breathes steadily, feeling her body slowly come alive.

"Get away from her," Leoben says to Simon. Simon raises his hands innocently, then sets a syringe aside.

"You're supposed to know what you're doing," Leoben continues. "You could have killed her."

Simon shrugs, meeting Leoben's gaze dispassionately. "She's alright. She's fine."

"She's not fine! She can barely open her eyes!" He's angry. She didn't realize at first how strange it was. He turns and rushes toward her, and even though he looks hostile she doesn't even raise her arm for defense. He puts his hand on the mask over her mouth and pushes the other hand away from her, sliding his leg around behind her for support at the same time. The bed moves when someone gets up but she can't tilt her head to see him.

She raises her eyes to Leoben. "It's alright," he says, looking down at her, his face calm. "Give it some time to wear off."

"Just breathe slowly and deep as you can." She flicks her gaze to Leoben, standing by Simon now. She closes her eyes as the nausea rises up. They look the same. They are the same: one holding her up, one closely observing the condition she's in. Planning new doses of their drugs. Panic washes some of the grogginess out of her head.

"Hey. Just relax." One of them touching her, soothing her when she tensed. She can't move but she can feel. The pressure tightens across her chest

"What--" she says, and he lifts the mask up, away from her face so she can still smell the difference in the oxygen. "What are you doing to me? What do you want?" She opens her eyes in time to see the Leobens exchange a glance, but it's more hostile than conniving. "I think you can leave us alone now," Leoben says--the one with her on the bed.

The other Leoben says, "For now." He looks at her and his eyes are gentle. "Feel better, Kara." When he says her name, it's just like every other time. He says it like he cares. And when he nods at Simon and walks out, she wishes he would stay. But the Leoben holding her whispers, "I was afraid you were lost," and pulls her further into his arms. "If you left now, you wouldn't know the way."

She licks her lips. "What way?"

" _*The*_ way," he replies, not helpful at all.

"Gods, you're annoying," she says. "Don't do that to me again."

"I'm sorry, Kara; you were given too much--"

"Why can't you take me off the drugs? How frakking far could I get?"

He looks her over carefully, and for a moment she thinks he just might want to agree. He kisses her forehead. "It's not yet the time."

She shoves him away. "Frak you."

"I'm sorry you're so angry," he says.

"I will never take your orders like another machine. No matter how much of that stuff you give me."

"I don't want to give you orders," he replies gently. He seems to mean it. "Kara, why do you think you are here?"

She stares at him. "You tell me."

He shakes his head. "If you weren't meant to be here, you would be somewhere else."

"Is that supposed to make sense?" Kara demands. She can feel her own anger, for the first time in weeks, rushing her nerves so powerfully that she feels light-headed. She can see her own trembling hands. She needs to get up, use this feeling for something while she still can, but she feels compelled to listen instead. Her anger is real, but the longer she sits here the less she wants to act on it. She _*needs*_ to understand, or she just wants to.

He touches the pulse point in her neck. "Shh," he says. "Don't fight it."

"Don't fight what," she hisses, pulling away.

"Destiny," he says. He smiles slightly. "Do you still pray to your gods, Kara? Why bother?" he whispers into her ear. She shivers.

"I suppose you want to convert me."

"Your gods don't have the power to deliver you."

"Faith isn't always about answers."

He hugs her gently to him and speaks in a low voice. "It should be, though. Faith should provide the answers where they exist." Her hands have stopped shaking, restless energy draining out of her as he gently combs through her hair.

* * *

Laura glances down the row of chairs where she's sitting, from Maya down to Anders on the end. Maya sits with her chin up as though she's paying attention to Brother Cavil. Though most of the others look forcibly resigned to stay seated, looking around Laura can see that there are a few others who look like they're listening, too.

Brother Cavil always addresses them informally, dressed in clothes much like they all wear and slouched against the podium on the edge of the stage. He is friendly and wry, as though they're not all mandated to be here. Laura gazes again down the row and Anders' eyes meet hers, burning with a fierce resentment. She fears that he may be the only one in this tent with that much passion left.

Maya touches her hand. Laura looks up to see Cavil watching her. "You all know by now that I am not very devout," he remarks, not lifting his gaze. "But if there is a god, or even a goddess, then you know that that god is in the rain as well as the sun." He waves toward the door. "God is in whatever we do, wherever we are. Is there a grand plan? No, I don't think there's a grand plan. But there certainly is a path. Every life has a path, and that includes life in this room." He bows his head and looks at his gnarled hands seriously. "Each of you is capable of something--something you _*know*_ you are good at--and that is the role for each of you. You fulfill your function and if there is a god, I tell you, you are _*in*_ god's will!" He looks out across the room fiercely, eyes sparkling with his belief. "This is the faith I recommend to all of you. Believe there is a path for you," he commands. "Follow that path to find happiness. Don't tell me you don't know when you're not on your path! You know you do." He paces back and forth in front of them. "You know what happens when you stray from your path? Do you? I know you do. Let's see some hands raised in here. Chief Tyrol, I know you have some personal experience."

Tyrol sighs and shifts in his seat. "I guess..." He looks irritated as he confesses, "I had dreams--nightmares."

"About throwing yourself off the top of the flight deck, am I correct?" Cavil moves on, gaze sweeping over every face. "You recognize that restless feeling. That unhappiness. That internal knowledge that you have fallen off the path!" He inserts a strategic pause. Laura recognizes his strategy, but she can't fault him for delivery. His technique is brilliant.

Laura takes Maya's hand and clenches it hard enough to hurt. Maya doesn't turn her head but squeezes back to acknowledge her.

"Now, as to every path working together," Cavil continues in a calm voice, neatly concluding his message, as always, with Cylon propaganda. "Our only interest is in cooperation and restoration. Each of you who is on the correct path has obtained comfort, has obtained warmth and peace and dare I say it, personal happiness." He stops and smiles warmly at Tyrol and Cally. Cally ducks her head into the crook of her baby's neck, uncomfortable. "It has fallen to us to provide for you what we can. We consider it our duty, and in our duty we find peace. Happiness. I wish that for all of you."

Laura deliberately loosens her grip. The more angry she is, the more she has been capable of patience. She grits her teeth and makes herself a careful observer.

"Find your comfort in that, if you can, instead of prayer." Cavil nods at them affectionately. "Go now, and stay warm, everyone."

On the way home, Laura and Maya huddle together to break the icy wind. "I'd like to set up our own prayer meetings," Laura murmurs into her ear. "I'll lead them if no one else can." She watches their surroundings carefully.

"Sounds like a good idea," Maya replies.

"If I have to hear about aligning yourself with Nature one more time without saying anything back..." Laura doesn't look away from the Five model as he walks past them, going the other direction. "I'm going to be sick," she concludes with emphasis.

"I know what you mean," Tyrol says under his breath. He holds his wife and child under one arm, watching the streets as closely as Laura is.

When they approaching Laura's shelter, she turns to the others with a broad smile. "Would you like to come in? Maya and I have gathered enough soup rations for everyone to have some."

Tyrol glances around, then exchanges a look with his wife.

"We'd appreciate the company, if you have the time," Laura adds. She extends her smile to Samuel Anders as the others grouped into their huddle look away and start backing away from the danger of association.

"I'd like some soup," Cally speaks up. "Thank you, Madame President." She moves toward the tent, tugging Tyrol along by the hand.

"Laura is fine, Cally. Glad to have you." Laura steps back and Maya leads them back off the street into the unpaved part of town.

Sam Anders follows them without comment, rubbing his hands up and down his arms over the worn fabric of his shirt-sleeves. His cheeks are wind-chapped. Inside the tent, he stays out of the way and watches quietly while Cally and Maya wrap the babies in blanets and prop pillows around them in the corner where it's most warm. "Any news from the camps?" he eventually asks Tyrol.

Tyrol shakes his head. "They're not killing them," he says, addressing Anders' primary question. "They're just supervising their work. They've got them working outside town, digging holes and planting. It's tough work, all rock out there, and they're out far enough that they don't see anyone. They work side-by-side with the metal models."

"I'd rather kill myself first," Cally remarks, off-hand, taking her seat at the table. "The skinned ones are bad enough." She leans forward and rubs her back. Tyrol moves away from the wall by Anders, who follows reluctantly. His expression is the frustrated look that hasn't left his face since his recovery.

"I hope it tastes alright," Maya apologizes as she's serving the bowls. "I couldn't be choosy about which vegetables go with what, and there wasn't very much flavor to the broth."

"It's warm," Tyrol responds, bringing the entire bowl to his face and sipping out of the rim. "S'bout all you can ask for."

Laura watches Anders put his spoon to his mouth several times before he pauses to say, "It's good, thanks. Lot better than the swill I cook up."

Cally chuckles softly. "You should taste mine. I still can't seem to manage--"

"You do fine," Tyrol cuts her off, shaking his head. "Nobody expects fancy food on New Caprica."

Cally looks down at her bowl, making circles with her spoon in the soup.

"I was telling Maya on our way back," Laura begins, "I'd like to set up our own form of church. We can have meetings as secrecy permits. I would gladly offer to plan times and places, with the help of any other volunteers. I was hoping you would help me get the word out."

Tyrol shrugs. "Sure, we can try."

"Might be nice," Cally offers. "Hear the Scriptures again. The real ones."

"You think that's worth the risk?"

Laura offers Anders a waning smile. "I think anything that helps us hold onto our humanity is worthwhile."

Anders' gaze is critical. "What are you going to tell people to believe in? The Fleet? Teach them how to bide their time until they're rescued? I think people are doing just fine with that as it is." He hunches back over his bowl.

"Most of these people think it's worthwhile just to survive," Laura remarks calmly. "The truth is that survival has become more noble than resistance. And survival, right now, seems to mean adapting to the Cylons."

Anders stares at her, holding up his spoon. Laura raises her hand slightly, stopping him from speaking. "I believe it's important to keep reminding ourselves why we should want to _*be*_ rescued." She puts her hand back in her lap. "I really do think that at this point, small actions are the most important. Right now, all-out resistance would be futile and merely serve to get people killed."

Anders shakes his head and looks away, his throat working to swallow. "Maybe if Kara were still here, I could see your point. Maybe," he adds with emphasis. Even Laura doubts it. Kara Thrace would probably have the same attitude toward the matter as her husband. "But I haven't forgotten what those machines do. I guess it's time I realize I'm just playing a different game from the rest of you." He puts his spoon down and stands. "Thanks for the soup, it was nice."

"Sure," Maya says softly. They sit in silence as he leaves the tent.

"Did he really see Starbuck?" Cally asks after a long moment.

Laura hesitates. "He thinks he did," she finally says. Tyrol shrugs again and goes back to eating.

"But if Starbuck's really alive--"

Her husband cuts her off. "Even if we could get her out, there's nowhere she could hide. There's nowhere safe in town, and conditions are too harsh on the rest of the planet. It's a day's hard walking to even get far enough from the perimeter to hide, and we don't know how far their patrols extend. It's a wasteland out there. Nobody could keep that up for long. Not even Starbuck."

"You think she's better off where she is?" Cally demands, looking frightened.

Tyrol glances briefly at Laura. "Maybe she is."

Laura sighs, looking away from their pitiful table. "I never dreamed it could come to this," she murmurs. The others don't respond.

When Cally and Tyrol prepare to get home to warmer surroundings, Laura stands by the door and remarks, "He should have waited until the sun was out." She holds the neck of her sweater up to her chin to ward off the cold.

"What do you mean?" Chief Tyrol answers. He's crouched by the door lacing his mud boots back on.

"Haven't you noticed?" Laura smiles to herself. "When the sun is out, everyone is happy. Then the rain comes again and everyone remembers what oppression is."

Tyrol stands up, stamping the heel of his foot against the ground. "But when it rains, everyone just wants to stay in out of the weather." He meets her gaze, clear-eyed. "I'll see you later, Madame President."

"I'll look forward to that, Chief Tyrol." She steps aside for him when he leaves and nods at Cally, who holds the baby close to her chest. She didn't think the air inside the tent could possibly get any colder, but it's windy outside and it blows straight through her sweater. She watches the street for a moment. The streets cleared quickly after the meeting, people doing just what Cavil said. Everyone was inside and warm, if they'd moved into Cylon housing. Shivering and miserable, if they hadn't. Laura pulls the tent flap closed and fastens it. It's hard to blame the warm ones. Sometimes she's not quite convinced resistance is worthwhile.

* * *

Two days later when Kara wakes, she is really awake. Her head doesn't feel fuzzy from drugs. She sits up quickly.

"How do you feel?" Leoben stands over her, looking at her expectantly. He drops a pile of her own clothes on the end of the bed.

"Better," she says. The door opens and another Leoben comes in. They're both wearing the garish shirts the Leoben model seems to prefer. The second pauses and glares at the first, who steps back from the bed without comment.

Kara touches her own forehead and tries to ignore the wrongness of the two of them standing there. The second Leoben addresses Kara. "Would you like to go out for breakfast?"

"Where?"

He tilts his head.

"Yes," she overlaps herself quickly. "I want to go out."

He smiles. "Get dressed. I'll be waiting outside." He gives the other Leoben a look and they both file out.

Kara swings her legs out of bed and reaches for the clothes. They've brought her regulation tanks along with a civilian sweater and it's ridiculous how much she wants to get into them. She's been out of military dress for more than a year, but dressing in familiar standard-issue still makes her feel more herself than dealing with the length of her own hair.

She showers and gets dressed, and the door is unlocked when she's ready. Leoben is waiting for her in the hallway--just one of him--like he said. He holds out his hand. "Hungry?"

"I really am," she admits, putting a hand to her stomach instead and turning the direction they usually take. She hasn't been this hungry in weeks. "Tell me you guys got something besides noodles and dry vegetables."

He smiles. "I promise."

He's telling the truth. The Cylons have set up one of the new buildings to look like a shop from Old Caprica's market square. They've replanted trees and bushes around the outside, like they're trying hard to make it look like it belongs there. Inside it still smells too fresh, like paint and hot metal. But when she sits down at a tiny round table in a high chair, it feels eerily real. She stiffens in response to the familiarity. One of the Three models brings over a tray with coffee and toast. It's warm and fresh and it smells so good, Kara's stomach recoils. She'd rather be treated like a prisoner, though she should know better.

Leoben, sitting on the other side of the table, is grinning at her like she just agreed to god's frakking plan. She looks around warily, but the room is full of Cylon skin-jobs enjoying themselves. They are clustered around tables, holding coffee and chatting like a bunch of students from the Academy, and she's just another face at another table. The faces repeat themselves, but most of the groups only include one copy of each. Even Cylons must get creeped out talking to a replica of themselves.

"Would you prefer something else?" Leoben looks disappointed in her indifference to the food.

She gives him a bitter look. "Which one are you, anyway? The one who sat with me last night? The one who brought the clothes? Or do I get a new copy every day now?"

He frowns. "What do you mean, Kara?" he asks, patiently. He pushes his coffee cup aside, as though they're going to have a long discussion.

She rolls her eyes. "I'm just wondering if you flip a cubit for who takes me to breakfast."

"You know who I am, Kara."

"No," she replies as viciously as she can while ignoring the expanding smell of food. "I know the name you go by. I know you're a frakking machine and that's it."

He tilts his head slightly, as though considering the thought. "You know more than the last time we met."

"The time I watched you get thrown out of an airlock?"

The corner of his mouth tips, enough for her to realize she just gave him her acknowledgement. "Yes."

She sits back in her chair and tries to fight off the confusion. He'll try to get into your head, Adama had warned her. He's good at it. You won't know what his agenda is until after. She tries not to react when she realizes who is approaching the table. "Baltar?"

"Ah, Captain Thrace," he greets her cheefully. "I see you're enjoying the food selection." He waves his hand and continues smoothly, "Oh, but I forgot. It's not actually Captain anymore, is it. Well, I suppose I'll have to call you Kara." He flashes his teeth, and Kara feels the quiver of something else familiar: the need to attack.

"President Baltar," she sneers, "Oh, I forgot. It's not actually President anymore, is it."

"As a matter of fact," Baltar returns quickly, "It is. I retain administrative control of the New Caprican government. So the honorific is still correct."

Kara darts a look at Leoben. "Are you frakking kidding me?" she glares at Baltar. "You're working with the Cylons now?"

Baltar laughs, smoothing his tie. "The histrionics are quite unnecessary. I assure you the situation is well in hand." He nods at the food on the table. "I think I can guarantee you wouldn't be sitting down to a brunch like that without the aid of the Cylon."

Kara leaps to her feet and gets into his face. She hasn't even raised her fist when she's yanked back into her chair hard enough to slam her spine against the back. She looks over her shoulder at one of the blonde skin-jobs, a number Six. She's not even looking at Kara; she smiles beatifically at Baltar while probing eyes rove his face. "Hello, Gaius."

"Good morning," he replies, abruptly self-conscious. He clears his throat, and runs his fingers through his hair. "Sleep well?"

"I think you can guess," she says, with that same calculated curve of her lips.

Kara turns to Leoben. He's leaning back in his chair, watching. "Would you like to sit down?" he finally says, and sits up to reach for his coffee.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't really--" Baltar cuts himself off when he sees Six pulling a chair away from another table. "Yes, I suppose we have a few minutes for coffee." He swings around with a hand raised to signal the Cylon manning the bar. Kara crosses her arms and observes his act. He unbuttons his suit jacket as he pulls a chair from another table and sits down in a fluid gesture, facing Six across the table.

"We're very proud of our new cafe," Six remarks, her gaze never leaving Baltar's face.

"It seems to be a success," Leoben agrees. Kara is aware of his eyes on her, just as intense.

Baltar clears his throat again and nods at Leoben, a few seconds after the fact. Distracted.

"Aren't you busy playing president?" Kara begins.

"I would think twice before I denigrate the Colonial government, if I were you," Baltar speaks sharply. "The colony is thriving, and even those less fortunate than you have reaffirmed their allegiance to the same government I represent."

Six laughs softly, leaning into the table and crossing her arms over her chest. "Careful, Gaius. She'll think you're insecure."

"I don't care what Miss Thrace thinks," Baltar says very deliberately, looking back at the Six smugly. His eyes fall to her breasts.

Kara watches them stare at each other for a moment, then looks at Leoben. "Do you keep him in a cell, too?" she asks, tilting her head toward Baltar. "Or is his leash sufficient?"

Kara finds Six is looking at her for the first time. "Starbuck," she says, drawing out her call sign slowly. "We've just begun to rebuild. Gaius sees a better world in its first stage. You must have faith to comprehend."

"I have plenty of faith, just not in your god," Kara replies flippantly.

"Six," Leoben says. They all look at him. He eyes the blonde Cylon with cool eyes, looking less than pleased. His hand is still wrapped around his coffee but he hasn't been drinking it.

"The girl doesn't need your protection--" and she pauses before she uses his name, "Leoben." So this is the Cylon leader, then. Kara can tell by the way she answers him. It would piss her off even if she weren't ruining breakfast, and even if she didn't have particular reasons to hate model Six.

Leoben's hand is resting on the table by his coffee and he watches his own flicking fingers idly. He raises his eyes slowly, tranquil. "This is not a game. And Starbuck is not a toy to bandy back and forth."

Kara's stomach is clenching from more than just the conversation, and the way the food smells doesn't help. She reaches for the toast because it's better than letting her stomach speak for itself. She shoves half a slice into her mouth and then licks her fingertips. She doesn't give a frak about the company, if they want to stare.

"Good?" Leoben is watching her, and he might be pleased or he might be amused, but it's a good thing she can't tell.

"It's food," Kara says with a full mouth. It's worse than _Galactica_ 's. Frakking toasters can't cook.

Baltar is shifting in his seat, distinctly irritated. Kara gulps the cold coffee. She doesn't have a clue where the Cylons could get milk, and it pisses her off. Six unfurls from her chair and brushes against Kara's arm when she stands. Kara ignores her and reaches across the table to Leoben's plate. "You gonna eat that?" Six looms over her shoulder and Baltar is waiting to get the last word in.

Leoben waits until she's already stuffed his toast into her mouth before he says, "Yeah. I was." And he grins, like he's on to her and he doesn't care.

Kara bursts out laughing, loudly, with her breakfast in her mouth, and she hopes if she laughs long enough, then when she stops they'll be gone.

"You want it back?" she retorts, and starts picking her teeth. Baltar is brushing off his suit and backing away, and out of the corner of her eye, Kara watches him take the Cylon's hand.

Leoben is watching her in silence. "You don't have to be like them," he says. "There is a place for everyone in god's plan."

"That's great frakking news," she answers. Her stomach lurches and she ignores it. She's going to need the nourishment.

"I have a surprise for you." Leoben is picking at the crumbs on his plate and dotting his fingertips against his tongue. "Not another map to Earth...but you'll like it. Are you finished?"

She shrugs. "Think I've had enough."

He takes her hand and leads her through the cafe to the front door and no eyes follow them. They either don't resent her presence or they don't care at all, and if Kara knew which one, maybe she could do something about it.

It's a jeep, and it really does surprise her. She hasn't seen a real frakking motor vehicle since she last visited Original Caprica. "We are technically proficient, as you know." Leoben smiles, stroking the outside. After a year spent unsucessfully pretending they could rebuild Caprica City, it's like the Cylons have finally brought it to them. Coffee shops and all-terrain vehicles. The ground feels that much more solid, and just as much a prison as it ever was. Kara looks to the sky. It's dark with clouds.

"Is it alive?" she asks. She really wouldn't put it past them to have a Cylon-hybrid vehicle with gooey insides. Why the frak not?

Leoben ignores the question. "Would you like to drive?"

"Frak yes," she automatically replies, and bounds into the driver's seat. Leoben slides in the other side while she finds the key-less ignition switch. The engine roars to life. "Gods, I love that sound," she purrs in tune with the noise.

Leoben braces his hand against the frame of the jeep, so he can sit in his seat turned toward her. She ignores him, ignores his eyes on her hands handling the machinery, hits the gas and cranks the wheel so the jeep jumps forward in a sharp turn. She doesn't ask where she can go. She just drives, fast and hard, hitting the uneven ridges and dips of the land recklessly and ruthlessly flattening the Cylons' new plants. Leoben makes no comment and she keeps driving past rows of metal Cylons, standing motionless out in the sun, until they're driving across empty plains of cracked dirt and she can almost forget he's there at her side. This planet, this place they called New Caprica as if repeating their mistakes was good, is a waste of space. A lot of space, and nowhere to go. It's hot in the open-air jeep and the closest cover is a line of trees Kara's driving toward, far off on the horizon. If a war were fought here, the lines would be drawn face to face. There is no natural shelter, water, or fuel, and no food grows anywhere but near the delta where the city was built. The gods did not provide them this planet. It was a lie they were all willing to believe.

When the jeep reaches the line of trees she can see past and beyond them that the land is still dry and empty. Kara stops the jeep. Even with the engine idling, it's too quiet. She turns it off and looks at Leoben. She tells herself it's strategy, not defeat.

He's so silent she might have lost him, but she didn't. He sits so still, for a moment she might see through his skin to the machine, his arm braced on the side of the jeep and the other across his stomach. For once he doesn't have any nature commentary. She stares at him and lets every plan she's considered and had to reject shift to the back of her thoughts. She can't kill him. She can't run. This is not the planet of the gods and there will be no deliverance from dehydration.

She pulls him forward by the head, his hair rough and sweat-sticky between her fingers, and she kisses him open-mouthed and not delicate. "Is this what you want?" she asks him when she pulls back. "Did you come to New Caprica to frak Kara Thrace?"

He looks at her, his lack of expression intimate, as though he doesn't have to answer because she already understands. "I came looking for Kara Thrace, yes," he says evenly.

"That's it?" she demands, and she's asking as much about the words as about the answer. He nods, though. "That's not enough for me," she replies, angry, and this time he reaches back for her pull and when they kiss, it's just as harsh as everything she wants to say. She opens her eyes and he meets them, waiting on her. She yanks his unbuttoned shirt off and pushes him back against his seat by the shoulders. When she pulls his gaudy flowered t-shirt over his head, it makes his hair stand on end. "Your heart is beating," she says, her fingers on the vein standing out in his neck. "Why did they give you a heart?" She asks him like it's an accusation, but his expression doesn't change and she doesn't give him a chance to answer. "Doesn't that make you angry?"

"Is that what you want, Kara?" he cuts her off. "Do you want me to make you suffer?" He put his hands around her hips, and she knows what he's going to say. "Will pain make my love more real?"

"You only know how to love when it is practical," she says sharply. "You're a machine. You have a _*plan*_. It's--utilitarian."

He smiles. "I could say the same. How often have you turned away from what you feel because you're scared?"

She leans so close to his face, his eyes go blurry. "I'm _*human*_. We don't have one divine _*mission*_ that dictates which emotions we can feel!"

He pushes himself up and pulls her out of the jeep with him. "Do you even know how to do this?" she taunts him, when he pushes her back against the hot metal of the front grill. He's held her in her sleep and she's tried not to think of him as a man but she has never felt the heat in his gaze on her like that of Baltar, or Lee, or Sam. She wants to make him mad. If he feels, she wants to make him feel something _*now*_.

His eyes never hesitate and he unbuckles her belt with quick fingers. The metal of the jeep is hot enough to burn and is going to hurt her, but she doesn't move away from it. He lifts her when he slides her pants over her hips and sets her back down on his pink and grey shirt, safe from the heat of the metal. And she realizes why the machines want to have sex with humans. Her body makes no distinction for programming.

She knew this was screwed up before even kissed him, and she'd prefer to suffer immediately--from burns on her backside or dirt in her panties--but he's too careful to let her feel the pain, and she can only sense it lurking, held off by his hands lifting her away from the heat of the hood and and holding her above the abrasive sand. He's too gentle, too real, the sweat between her breasts feels cool against the touch of his tongue, and the skin of her thighs feels the movement of muscle wrapped around his waist.

The sun beats down on her so she closes her eyes. Most sex feels the same, in the end, but sex wit the machine shouldn't feel like this.

He's not too tired to hold onto her, even after the engine has cooled, and he traces her spine and says softly, "You are not the living sacrifice, Kara. Your gods will not look down on this and favor your escape."

Her chest tightens and she can't speak. He kisses her neck under her hair, there where it meets her spine. "Suffering is not an act of faith."

She cannot respond either to taunt or disagree. The collateral damage has already grown exponentially, and he's still being so gentle with her. Kara closes her eyes, held in his arms, and she reminds herself that all her best plans begin with a mistake.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occupation: The Ordeal of New Caprica. What's more important: survival or resistance?

Laura has made herself record keeper. She's well aware of the transitory nature of history. This will all be forgotten if someone doesn't write it down now.

"Someone," Laura had laughed to herself. No longer president, she had no excuse to delegate the task to someone else. 

It's been a trial to conserve paper. With no end to the occupation in sight, Maya and Laura have begun treating paper and ink as priceless commodities. The lack was the hardest for the children, and not only because it meant oral presentations instead of written essays. Now everyone, from the little ones who don't remember better to the older ones who understand what it means when something lasts, are limited to drawing in the dirt and watching their creativity blow away.

Laura puts down her pen. She has to choose her words carefully, and she perhaps gives the children too much attention in the greater scheme of things. Her hand is cramped from writing neat, tiny letters. She extends her fingers and rubs the base of her thumb Maya comes up behind her, her coat still on, and puts her hand over Laura's. "Oh my gods," she says, her gaze falling on the papers.

Laura watches her gaze dart back and forth across the page, following the printed words Laura's fitted her handwriting between. "Where did this come from?"

"I'm surprised you didn't see them when you were in town," Laura replies. "I understand they're posting them at every door. Cally brought this by. Just in time," she smiles, smoothing the folds out. "It suited my purpose."

"I guess she's still alive after all, then," Maya says, sitting down in the other chair. She starts unbuttoning the heavy clasps on the oversize coat she's wearing, then pauses. "Do you think Anders has seen it yet?"

Laura sighs. "I wouldn't know."

"I asked some of the men at the pyramid court whether he'd been around. They said they haven't seen him in days."

"I can't say I'm surprised."

Maya shivers when she drapes her coat over the back of the chair. "I don't know why I bother taking this off anymore."

"The nights are going to get colder and longer," Laura remarks.

Maya is hesitating, straightening the papers in front of them and carefully smoothing the one on top. Her fingers linger over the face of Kara Thrace, sitting between Gaius Baltar and the Cylon model Six at a table filled with food. "We're going to have to accept blankets from the Cylons," she says, lining up the corners. "For Isis, at least. I just don't think we can make it through another winter with what we have."

"I was thinking about that," Laura admits. She speaks slowly, evaluating the decision she reached earlier. "I don't believe a child should suffer from cold or hunger to spite our enemy. The only one truly harmed is the child." She touches Maya's busy hands. "I think Isis would be better off in a Cylon housing complex."

Maya doesn't look up. "She would," she agrees, choosing her words. "But I wouldn't. She may be cold, but she is protected. And happy. I know Isis and I could never have survived here without you, even before the occupation. She's too young to understand, but someday she'll know we did the right thing. And I won't leave you here to resist them alone."

"I know."

Maya looks at her.

"I don't intend to let you go alone," Laura says carefully. "I don't believe it would be in any of our best interests to separate."

"You mean you're going to move with us?" Maya looks both shocked and relieved, and Laura manages a small smile.

"I imagine there's some way to resist the Cylons while staying warm."

Maya leans over to give her a one-armed hug. "We'll put our heads together on it," she says blithely. Laura leans her forehead against Maya's for a moment. She often wonders whether the issue is resisting, or proving the resistance actually exists.

* * *

Leoben brings her jogging shoes that afternoon and she knows what it means, so she puts them on and follows him outside without giving him a hard time about it. He gestures around them. "I know you've missed running laps. You're well enough now, if you'd like to."

Kara rolls her eyes at that excuse briefly, as she looks out across the open yard, cleared of grass and trees and now of machines as well. It's a wide open space for her to run and she doesn't need to hear the offer twice.

This is just the chance she's been needing. Kara makes her laps wide and takes it easy for the first few laps, warming up because it's been awhile and she can actually feel her whole body, weak knee and all, for the first time in weeks And she watches the perimeter, picking out the Cylons tucked in behind the trees and trying to mark positions. But every time she circles back around, she sees more of them--shiny metal, hard to miss--and they're constantly moving, patroling in tight proximity so they can see each other and never miss a frakking thing. There will be no slipping out that way. It doesn't take her long to see it. She stops counting before she reaches a hundred toasters and then she just starts counting laps, counting how fast her pulse rate spikes and how quickly her breath catches up to her.

She feels out of shape. Her heart's thumping hard and her feet are hurting. Her hair is plastered to her neck. She doubles over and presses her fingers into a cramp on her side and from there, she sees Number Six's legs first. They're not hard to recognize. "Let me guess," Kara says, trying not to gasp for breath. "You don't have to work out." She straightens carefully and deliberately slides her gaze up Six's body. "You're just designed that way."

Six's lips curl up slightly. She looks down at Kara as though she'd like to kick her in the chest. Much as she'd done on Caprica, something Kara just can't forget. "You've seen the guards now. You can see that you won't escape."

"Don't you already have a project?" Kara retorts, crossing her arms. "I'm Leoben's; Baltar's yours...that about right?"

Six reaches her hand out unexpectedly, and touches Kara's face. Kara jerks away. Six smiles. "You are important to Leoben, it's true. But I'm interested in every part of god's plan."

"So tell me something. Do I have any choice in this so-called plan? Is there something specific I have to do, or does pretty much anything work? Really, Six," Kara says disdainfully, "tell me how your god's plan has anything to do with what I do."

Six crosses her arms, like she's actually listening. "You _*are*_ looking for peace. No matter how often you deny it."

"Oh, please. I'm really frakking stunned by how well you see through me," Kara says angrily, cutting the air with her hand. "You know something? Peace means nothing coming from a robot."

Six tilts her head and starts to speak, and then there's a commotion in the trees behind Kara. Six grabs Kara's arm and yanks hard. Kara hits the ground and rolls away from Six, but before she can find her feet again she's being picked up bodily from behind, head shoved forward so it's tucked between her knees and carried that way, surrounded on all sides by centurions, all the way back to the Cylon complex. She feels a little dizzy when he sets her back on her feet; she turns around and sees Leoben. His features are drawn tight, but he doesn't speak to her. He shoves her down into a seat at one of the cafe tables and leaves her there, trapped in the middle of the centurions. She pulls her legs up under her and waits, irritably, rubbing her sore neck.

When he comes back, he's with Six. They're gesturing emphatically but talking too quietly to hear. "Could you speak up?" Kara calls to them, or to the glimpse of them she has between the metal toasters clustered around her. "I'd like to know what the frak is going on, too, you know."

The centurions step away and Six stands in front of her. "You were shot at. Sniper."

Kara raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"Someone wants you dead," Six declares, pointedly. "Maybe more than one someone."

"And why..." Kara shrugs nonchalantly, picking at the table with her fingernail, "should I believe you didn't send some Cylon out there with a gun to shoot at me so you could save my life and inspire me to dedicate myself to the frakking Cylon cause?"

Leoben opens his hand. There are three bullet casings in his palm. Kara looks away indifferently as he walks toward her. "These should look familiar, Kara." He unfists her hand and gives them to her. She examines them closely, but she already knows what she's looking at. She shrugs and says nothing, her hand suspended in midair. Leoben is glaring at her, so she glares back.

"She requires full-time protection," Six says. "From now on--"

Kara rolls her eyes. Leoben interrupts harshly, "How did they even get so close to the perimeter? He shot from the trees!"

"Do you know who it was?" Kara asks, trying to make it casual.

They ignore her. "You concern yourself with your mission and I will take care of security," Six hisses. She turns away sharply, but Leoben follows her. They carry on a fierce discussion a few steps away, but too softly for Kara to overhear anything. The metal centurions close ranks and block her view, anyway.

She looks at the shells in her hand. She can't feel hope, and she refuses to feel fear. She closes her fist and holds it in her lap.

* * *

Laura's face feels frozen in its welcoming smile, but she attempts to infuse her words with sincerity. "Colonel, I'm so glad to see you are safe and well. I'm so sorry about your loss." Her hand flutters to her eye. He's been unwilling to discuss the injury so far.

For all her effort, Colonel Tigh nods shortly in return. "Ms. Roslin," he grunts. She can't fault him for ignoring her title, obsolete as it is, though she had used his own out of respect. She smiles tightly, a silent reminder that the stability of their situation depends too much on cooperation for petty differences, and straightens her sweater. It is too big for her and she's been trying to trade it for weeks; she is constantly pulling it back over her shoulders.

"We have been mostly unsuccessful in our attempts to gather information about activities within the internment camps," she continues.

"I can see why," Tigh remarks, striding back and forth across the foyer of the apartment building. "You've all been keeping busy."

"Please do not allow yourself to jump to conclusions," Laura says evenly. "The people left in this town are civilians. Almost anyone with military training, including you, Colonel, was immediately rounded up and taken away. I believe the Cylons deliberately planned it that way."

"Maybe," is all he says, watching the busyness of the street. An informal market square has evolved in the center of town. There are clusters of people bartering vigorously over a variety of food and supply items. Pictures of President Baltar hang everywhere. The mood is undeniably cheerful. Tigh himself keeps glancing intermittently at the thin flyer in his hand. His wife's picture happened to be in this week's issue from the propaganda press.

"Now that you are here, things might change," Laura says. She's aware of the hope creeping into her tone, but inside she feels curiously empty. The thought she has put off for months now is forming in her head: it may simply be too late. She straightens. "We'll call a meeting. There are a few of us who refuse to give up just yet." She steps toward him so she's in his peripheral vision and smiles a little. "Stubborness is still a human quality, Colonel. Is it not?"

He turns his head, craning his neck. At least his one eye shows no sign of being complacent. "We better damn well hope it is."

* * *

It might have been a mistake to invite Tom Zarek, but Laura's convinced not inviting him would have been a bigger one. The truth is, she's not completely comfortable letting Colonel Tigh run the meeting. Zarek is sitting quietly enough in the corner, listening to everyone else speak. So far, Tigh has done most of the talking.

They haven't held a meeting since Laura and Maya moved out of their tent, but tonight the room is full. The new school building had been her suggestion, but not for the multiple exits Tigh and Tyrol mapped out. She's long been aware of her shortcomings when it comes to strategic planning, but she hadn't realized until tonight how uneasily aware she'd been of their lack of contingencies. Or her knowledge that she is not the leader these people will follow. Alone, she's never been able to guarantee their safety--and even less so now.

The room is filled mostly with men; children were too big a risk to bring to the meeting and the number of colonists who had settled down and started families in that first year meant the women were limited by their babies' safety. Former members of the Fleet, pilots and tech officers--some of them people Laura hasn't seen in weeks--have reappeared because of Tigh, but almost every member of Tyrol's crew is here because of Zarek. They're sitting in an oppressively silent group across from him, waiting for Zarek to make his move. Laura leans toward Tyrol, and he angles his ear her way. "Your men look more interested in Zarek than Tigh."

"Can see why they would be," Tyrol answers softly. His arms are crossed and his eyes don't leave the colonel, standing in the middle of the room.

"Division among us now would be disastrous," Laura says, keeping her voice low as well. Tyrol nods minutely. He's hard for her to read. Then he clears his throat loudly.

"Colonel," Tyrol says, not shifting from his reclining position. "We have looked into different methods to resist the Cylons. We tried keeping them under surveillance, but it's impossible. There are too many of them and they keep a tight perimeter. It's been impossible to get information. They keep a strict distance between their camp and ours and we have no means of transportation. No way of talking to anyone inside. Believe me, I've tried. We've got no choice but to be patient."

"Patience is getting us nowhere, Chief!" Tigh replies. "While all of you have been sitting on your asses, people are dying. You seem to be under the impression that the Cylons are being _*nice*_ to us now. Let me tell you, they're not being nice to anyone in those camps." He turns sharply and points a finger toward the closed door. "This situation we're in is not indefinite. We're not going to be here forever, and we have to be ready when the Fleet comes back!"

When Zarek does finally stand, the rustle of interested movement makes Tigh easy to interrupt. "What makes you think," he says, slowly, "that the Fleet will ever come back. Why would they think any of us are still alive? The Cylons could have wiped us all out within seconds, much less months after the fact. No one could have predicted they would want to occupy rather than annihilate this time."

"Admiral Adama won't make any assumptions about the Cylons' plans," Tigh answers, turning to Zarek begrudgingly. "He will find some way to come back and find out what happened to the people left behind. I guarantee it."

"I agree," Laura adds quickly, from her seat.

Zarek shrugs. "Right now it doesn't seem to matter. After all, it has been months, and what do we have to show for it? Everything the Cylons have done so far has been purposed to make us forget. To make us _*comfortable*_." Laura sighs. Zarek always did know how to capture a room. His voice reaches every corner, as he slowly circles, addressing everyone. "To make us let down our guard and forget that the freedom the Cylons give us is not truly free." He pauses with emphasis before the men from the former _Astral Queen_ , the men in Tyrol's work crew. "It was in the Cylons' interest to release the prisoners in Baltar's prison camps, in order to win their loyalty. They think they can manipulate us so easily!" He turns and looks around fiercely. "I feel fortunate to have been trapped in the underbelly of the Cylon machine these past months because at least it's honest. Colonel Tigh is right: they are not nice. Their plan is not to set all men free. Have they made your lives better? Yes! Temporarily!"

"What can we do, then?" one of Zarek's former prison ship inmates asks. "Can you lead us?"

Laura flinches and looks at Tyrol. He shakes his head helplessly, not meeting her eyes. "Why should we follow you?" He demands, just loud enough to be heard. "I think you're right and I still don't trust you. The fact that you're human doesn't make you a better bet than the Cylons."

Zarek whirls around and points a finger at Tigh, standing livid in the other half of the room. "Remember what happened the last time you followed _*him*_?"

Some of the crew from _Galactica_ shift in their seats. If a vote were taken right now in this packed room, Laura can see that it would go overwhelmingly to Zarek.

The door to the school room bangs shut and heads turns quickly, people tensing in their seats. It's Samuel Anders. "I'll follow anyone who can show me practical tactics." He looks from Tigh, to Zarek, and then at Laura and Tyrol. "Until then all I hear is talk and it all sounds the same."

"Sam's gotten the closest to the Cylons," one of the men by the door says, and someone murmurs something about Starbuck.

"What happened to Starbuck?" Tigh demands, stepping toward him. He looks concerned; whether for the girl herself or the loss of manpower, Laura can't guess.

"She's alive for now," Anders replies. "Unfortunately the Cylons have doubled their security."

"Because of you?" Zarek's quick. He steps into the conversation without hesitating.

"Yes," Anders admits, simply. "I shot at her. I missed." He shakes his head. "They're more careful about her safety than I expected."

"You shot at her?" Tigh repeats, startled. "You shot at your own wife?"

"She's been in that place for months and I haven't been able to get close to her," Anders says, leveling him with his hard gaze. "I made a promise to Kara. If I can't save her, I _*will*_ kill her. And if that's the only promise I can keep, I'll do it."

Laura looks at her hands, tightly held in her lap. Tyrol's hand is white on his knee. Even Zarek looks surprised. He crosses his arms and considers Anders, speaking up before Tigh can lash out. "How close can you get to the encampment?"

Anders shakes his head. "It's almost impossible. Surrounded by woods...constant patrols in tight circles. Bullet heads, not the skin-jobs. The machines are intelligent, but they've got no imagination. If you take your time and do a good job with camouflage, you can sneak up inside the perimeter, but it's dangerous. You get too far in and you're spotted, you've got no chance of getting out again. Especially without backup."

"And now you've caused them to intensify their guard?" Tigh breaks in. "By rushing in by yourself to get close to one person, while the rest of us are in just as much danger?"

"Far as I can see, humanity's not real concerned about saving itself," Anders responds with chilly anger. "And in case you've forgotten, I'm not bound to military procedure. In fact, none of us are." He gestures sharply around the room. "You can't rely on some title anymore, _*Colonel*_ , because it means nothing here. Nobody's fighting for your frakking army; everybody's worried about themselves! And unless you can convince me different," he jabs his own chest, "The only person I have any responsibility for anymore is Kara."

"It seems..." Zarek comments, giving the room a moment to quiet down, "The real problem here is this idea of the status quo." He turns a thoughtful gaze on the _Astral Queen_ men. "Everybody's waiting around to see who moves first. Problem is, if it's the Cylons, we could be wiped out before we ever knew they had a plan."

"People are afraid that if they show resistance, the Cylons will retaliate on the innocent," someone in the back explains. "We have families to think about."

"It's a valid concern," Laura says quickly. "The Cylons have shown interest in children before. Their safety means the future of the human race."

"And that comes first," Tyrol adds darkly. "Even if it means working with the Cylons."

"This is why we have a military," Tigh shoots back. "So there will be those able to fight to keep the others safe."

"It doesn't work that way here, Colonel!" Tyrol sits forward, voice raised. "There is no military and the Cylons won't make that distinction."

Zarek paces slowly back and forth across the room, drawing everybody's eyes. "The most important thing we can do, to begin with, is keep tabs on the Cylons themselves. That way we can plan our strategy accordingly."

Zarek turns on his heel to look at Tyrol and Laura. "Do we have anyone on the inside? Anyone close to the Cylons?" 

Tyrol hesitates. "Lieutenant Gaeta would have access to any information going through Baltar, and I'm pretty sure he's still loyal. I haven't been able to contact him directly. But--" He shrugs. "Now that the Colonel's been released, they might let him see his wife. Judging by the papers, she travels the same circles as Baltar."

"Sounds like a good place to start," Zarek says encouragingly.

"It's closer to a plan than we've had in weeks," Anders retorts. 

Zarek slaps the man on the back and leaves his hand on his shoulder in a show of unity. "I think we should be even more discreet in our meetings, now. We'll contact you men in smaller groups to set up training and independent operations."

Laura clears her throat. "These operations, Mr. Zarek. I'm sure everyone would feel more confident if you worked on them in cooperation with Colonel Tigh, Chief Tyrol, and Mr. Anders as well." She smiles tightly. "To ensure every possibility is taken into account and avoid unforeseen consequences."

Zarek smiles back knowingly. "Of course, Laura. And you should join us as well. I've always found your perspective--helpful."

She nods slightly, resigned. "I'm certain we all have the same goals in mind. My only concern is the safekeeping of the people in New Caprica."

Zarek nods placidly. "As is mine."

* * *

Of all the familiar faces from the Fleet, Gaeta's was about the last one Kara wanted to see. She'd generally always kept to unwritten separation between pilots and tech officers on _Galactica_ , so she didn't know him beyond the occasional poker game and the times his job brushed up against hers. She's so rarely divided him from his uniform that she has to look twice to make sure it's him. "Lieutenant Gaeta," she says, the words coming out reluctantly. "Fancy meeting you here."

He turns. His expression flickers briefly and then he looks resigned, but he never shows surprise. "Starbuck," he replies quietly. It's the first time she's heard her callsign in awhile and from him it sounds familiar. Her fingers twitch. She catches Leoben look down at them out of the corner of her eye. "How are you."

"I'm terrific," she replies with forced cheerfulness. "Why wouldn't I be, after all?"

He smiles humorlessly. "You look well. I saw your picture in the paper last week," he adds. His blink lasts just a second too long.

She looks at Leoben. He says nothing. She ignores the obvious and asks, "Still working for Baltar?"

Gaeta nods perfunctorily. "President Baltar is under a great deal of obligation which constrains the amount of time he can spend on government matters. I try to be of assistance."

Kara gives him a quizzical look. This was the problem with by-the-book officers. They stayed loyal to useless frak-ups who never earned their title and shouldn't be in office anymore anyway. "I'm sure you do," she responds coolly.

Gaeta's eye catches on hers, momentarily reproachful. "Yes." He pauses. "I'm sorry, I actually have to go. Nice running into you, Starbuck."

She shrugs and watches him stride away, straightening his suit as he goes. Leoben tilts his chin toward her. "You're taking your anger out on the wrong person, Kara."

"Oh, frak off." She jerks away from him, walking over to the coffee bar. If she has to eat, she's going to order her own food and Leoben can fend for himself. 

One of the mousy Number Five models gives her a little smile and offers a plate of wilted vegetables. "You guys know your food sucks, right?" After near starvation rations for a year, toast was the food of the gods. But it got old once she realized it was pretty much the only edible thing they could make. "Frakking ironic, a bunch of toasters making toast. Should have built yourself a machine that could cook."

"We can make anything that derives from a machine," Leoben says. "We excel at that."

"And yet you're so in love with nature." Kara looks at him. For once, she knows she's talking to a second copy, because the Leoben she was with this morning walked across the breakfast room to talk to a Sharon and he's still there.

Leoben smiles, soaking up her attention. It doesn't take much to get this one excited. "Nature is the unknown. God is in nature."

"And not in machines? Isn't that kind of a problem for you guys?" She snatches her toast and coffee from Five and looks for an empty table. The cafe is small, and it's always crowded. She's noticed a much smaller number of skin-jobs, compared to the army of centurions outside. None of them seem to have a lot to do.

Leoben clears a table for her by the wall and stands while she sits down. "Go ahead," she says, waving at the other chair. "Just don't wax poetic about rocks and streams or I'll upchuck my breakfast."

Leoben sits down slowly, watching her warily. "What?" she demands. "You think I might bite? I thought you liked that." She smiles sweetly. She can see the other Leoben moving toward them. He taps this one on the shoulder, looking irritated. They both stand there, looking at her.

"Oh, hey," she remarks casually, and washes the bite of toast down with creamy coffee. "You know, I'm starting to come around to this concept of so many of you. You guys all have some kind of shared consciousness, right? One of you works as well as another." She grins, widely. "Works out _*great*_ for me."

The first Leoben shoves the other one away. "I'm the one who came for you," he says slowly, watching her. His eyes are cold and impersonal, despite his words. "He came because he was convinced. He believed in the new cause. I came for _*you*_."

She sits up straight and puts on astonishment. "You mean you're actually different?" She scrutinizes the other Leoben, slow to leave, with exaggerated care. "Seriously, you guys could be twins." She waves the hand holding her toast at him. "How about under the clothes? I find this really, very hard to believe. You might have to show me."

The anger flashes across Leoben's face faster than she expected. He gives the second copy a hard shove in the middle of his chest. Leoben--the possessive one, the one who doesn't play nice with others--leans down to speak in her ear as she occupies herself with her breakfast. "You were chosen for me. I'm the one who knows you. Do you know what would happen to you without me?"

"I'm so much better off with you?" She challenges, meeting his eyes. "One of these other copies wouldn't step in if you weren't here?" Her smirk is defiant, even while he yanks her up out of her chair by her shoulders and slams her into the wall behind her chair. "So sorry my loyalties are spoken for," she grits out doggedly, looking past him. No one else in the room has looked up.

"The Adamas left you behind," Leoben says, leaning so close he's sharing her stilted breaths. "The man you married is dead to you." He quickly aborts her attempt to kick his shins, lifting her onto her toes and pressing his thighs hard against her hips. "I know you. You don't want to die. You're a survivor. Above everything else."

"I'll survive to come back and put a frakking bullet through your head," she hisses.

He smiles. "But you won't survive without my help. And your life will continue to go from one frak up to another," he says patiently, "until you accept your destiny." 

Kara laughs. "Oh, not my frakking destiny again."

"I told you you'd find Earth!" he shouts, shaking her.

"That's what it is? Because we were supposed to find earth and we didn't listen when you said it was our _*destiny*_?" She shrinks away from him again, but the indifference of the room full of Cylons chills her, keeps her there in the middle of his grip. There is no retreat.

"You think I'm more concerned with your feelings than completing my mission? I'm not." Leoben is heavy against her, clenching his jaw and smelling of sweat and anger just like a human man. "I will drug you, I will hook you up to a machine if I have to."

Kara's back goes rigid. "You think I could forget?" she shouts back, trying to create some distance. The back of her head aches where it's pressed against the wall. "Stop frakking lying to me. Stop playing me, stop acting like I'm going to forget because it will never happen. I will never--"

"You're the one lying to yourself," he speaks over her, forcefully. "I have been kind to you, I have made you feel safe, I have offered you everything I can and you deny that you feel anything for me. Why?" Leoben presses closer, his voice raising harshly on the last word. "Just because I'm a Cylon!"

"Exactly!" Kara spits into his face, and renews her struggle with his grip. "You can study me all you want, but you will never figure out how to make me love you and I _*never*_ will."

"Then who's the frakking machine!" Leoben snarls back. She gets a leg loose and spins around his body, but he doesn't hesitate and sends her crashing into the table. They land on the floor, her wrists still held in his tight grip. She can smell spilled coffee, warm against her scalp and soaking into her hair. "This is real," he says, looking down at her. "Do you feel this, Kara? Do you?" His other hand digs into the skin on her side. "This is real! If you don't accept this, you will cease to exist. I can do that, Kara. I can take your mind from you. I can use you..." He bucks against her. " _Like a machine_."

Kara closes her eyes against the shocking violation of tears. "Lords of Kobol," she whispers, more like groans, not meaning to speak aloud.

"Your gods are not coming to rescue you, Kara." His lips touch her forehead. "If your gods are so powerful, they have willed this to happen. Haven't you thought of that?"

Kara stares at him, unable to get enough air. She feels the familiar lack of control wrenching her gut. She's the little girl with the broken hands, the battered woman ass-up in a field cowering from the crossfire. She doesn't get saved. She only survives.

"What do you want from me?" she whispers, her voice level.

"In exchange for loyalty, I can give you protection," Leoben answers softly. "If you do what I ask, you will never be forced to do anything without your knowledge and consent."

"You want me--" Kara stops and swallows. She licks her lips quickly and forces the words without thinking too hard. "You want me to have a child."

Leoben nods. His eyes dart over her face, studying.

"A Cylon."

"Half Cylon," he says.

Kara swallows.

"Half yours," he finishes.

"Any child with Thrace genes mixed with Cylon has got to be frakked up," Kara says in a low voice. "You sure this is god's plan?"

Leoben's fingers thread through her hair, and they're not soft against her head. But he says her name with compassion. "Your blood is not tainted," he says. "You're special. I've always known." His lips touch her forehead again, like a benediction. "You can trust me, Kara."

"How do I know?" She asks blankly.

He pulls back slightly. "You want tangible proof of my love." He runs his fingers slowly down the side of her face before he removes his hand, and meets her eyes. "Just ask."

"But I can't mark your soul, can I," she says. "Just this body you can shed." Her voice is bitter, ripped to shreds.

He bows his forehead to hers. "This body is all I have to offer."

She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, her chest barely raising against the weight of him. "That's the most human thing you've ever said."

He kisses her gently. She bites back hard enough to taste his blood on her lips. He never pulls away. "I'll need a knife," she says. "And it's going to hurt."

His blood tastes like hers.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occupation: The Ordeal of New Caprica. What's more important: survival or resistance?

Kara starts asking for everything that comes to her head. She wants Leoben to think she's comfortable enough to be demanding. He brings her paint and she starts decorating the walls of her cell. He brings her special food and gives her shots himself, every day. Every time she jogs, an entourage goes with her--close enough to take a bullet for her, should it ever happen again. She leaves the room as much as she can but now she gets visitors. Six, mostly; she seems to find Kara fascinating. Kara's beginning to see the differences between them now, and she can tell that this model is the same one that's always around. There are fewer of her and she seems to be in charge, though she doesn't order Leoben to do anything. Kara mocks her for wanting to be present when Simon does her pelvic exam, but she can only peer down at her, over her knees, and it has no effect. Leoben is holding Kara's hand and she doesn't want to think about what they're doing down there, so she asks Six if she's frakking Baltar. "'Cause I gotta tell you," Kara laughs, "he's all flash."

Six says nothing, quiet as always, and the room is silent and Simon's tools are cold.

"Hey," Kara says loudly. "I'm up here." She wiggles her free hand toward her face. Six finally raises her eyes from Kara's parted legs.

"Without love, sex is the act of animals," she says softly.

Kara smirks. "Baltar _*loves*_ you?" she asks, her voice lilting. "Are you sure?"

Six's eyes flicker, but her expression doesn't change. "Love makes the difference," she repeats, gaze returning to the general location of Simon's hands.

Kara briefly pictures herself in the same position, with the same audience, giving birth to a hybrid machine. Her jaw locks at the same time as her grip and Leoben asks if something hurts. "Are you frakking done yet?" she demands, shooting a glare at Simon. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were taking advantage."

"He's doing his job," Six assures her simply.

"You might feel a slight pinch," Simon says, and she does. She darts a look at Leoben, to see if he's concerned.

He frowns at her. "You're alright?" She rolls her eyes.

"All done," Simon says. "You are in excellent condition," he adds, flipping the sheet back over her bent knees.

"Big frakkin' whoop," Kara mumbles. Simon stands and peels off his gloves. He gives Six a significant look.

"Okay, no talking about me out in the hallway, you guys. If there's going to be a discussion, I'm in." Kara cautiously pulls herself up on her butt, wary of tenderness. She feels like she's been thoroughly explored, but she's not going to think about it.

Leoben helps prop her up, fluffing up pillows. He looks at Six and Simon as he sits back down at Kara's side. She jerks her chin at them impatiently. "I'm the breeder in this scenario, let's go, come on."

Simon clears his throat. "Your contraceptive implant was removed some time ago, and has worked itself out of your system, but your fertile period has already passed for this cycle. The optimum time to impregnate you will be in about two weeks."

Kara gives him a thumbs up. She starts counting weeks in her head. It gives her more time than she expected, and she'll take any delay.

"Until then, you should continue to eat and exercise. Most importantly, try to enjoy yourself. We've found that relaxed women--"

"Oh my frakking gods," Kara interrupts. "Don't even start talking about love or the missing ingredient in your childbearing experiments or you'll make me sick."

"It's not just in bearing a child," Six rejoins, stiffly, turning away from her. "Anyway, she's human and she doesn't even want a child. She'll barely have to work at it." Her eyes are cool.

"Oh, that bothers you, doesn't it. The terrible curse of the Cylons: the inability to reproduce. Except in a factory, maybe, huh?" Kara laughs loudly. "And those of us with the biological ability take it for granted! What's the matter, Six? Too uptight to get knocked up? Don't take it personally. It could be Baltar's fault."

Six's face looks like it's chiseled from ice, but Kara can see the emotion flaring in her eyes. Past the triumph, it's also disconcerting. They're in a room with two of her compatriots, and neither of them even tries to come to Six's rescue. "Unlike you, I am satisfied with my place in god's plan," Six says, voice pulled tight from her lips.

"Yeah? Way I hear it, you kinda took the big plan into your own hands. Isn't that why you're here?"

Six looks at her strangely; for about a second, Kara thinks she's going to just start talking. For just that long, she looks like an actual person instead of a walking mouth-piece. "We're done here," she says, and strides toward the door. Simon follows without comment, holding his bag.

Kara turns her head up toward Leoben. "Well, no sex for you while I'm barren, I guess," she says sweetly.

Leoben ducks his head slightly and grins. Kara finds herself grinning back before she thinks about it, and lets it fall from her face. She knew he would get under her skin. She just has to remember he's there. "They said you should be relaxed," Leoben reminds her, teasingly.

"I've got news for you," Kara retorts. "Sex with you is hard work, buddy. Not relaxing. At all."

He touches her chin, giving her that sly smile. She's seen it too many times to count. "If I really believed that, I might be hurt."

She makes a show of baring her teeth at him. "Believe it."

* * *

Laura chooses action over futility and holds her peace while she helps form the women's projects. The men have divided into the disinterested and those who hang off Zarek's every word, but the women are more interested in general well-being. As long as Laura's suggestions produce practical results and remain helpful whether they stay here or someday go, they are willing to work. They dry and preserve food, storing even portions in every pantry in town as emergency rations. They make what they can out of patched and worn materials.

Laura has never been particularly good at this sort of work, but she is willing to learn. These things seem like such a small contribution, but someday they mean the difference between being prepared and getting backed into a corner. And she is grateful for the relative openness of the women. Meanwhile, she can keep an eye on Tigh and Zarek and ward off her increasing sense of uselessness. Despite promises to the contrary, both men have been keeping their own counsel and she has no idea of their plans.

Ellen Tigh shows her face in town for the first time since her husband was taken away by the Cylons. Laura smiles slightly when she watches her leap into the Colonel's arms, both of them behaving like newlyweds. Tigh ushers her into Laura's building, where he was given a room. As usual, it doesn't take long before they're arguing over living conditions.

Laura stops in their open doorway on her way upstairs and smiles amicably at Ellen. She has never been friends with this woman, and she doesn't intend to start now. But she hopes at least that she will have information to share about the Cylons. Anything would be better than what they have.

"Laura!" Ellen greets her effusively. She clasps Laura in an awkward hug. "You look so well. Don't tell me you're living here, too." She shoots a sharp look at her husband.

"Yes, I moved in about two months ago."

"I've been trying to talk the Colonel into moving out. I'm sure this place is fine for awhile, but I know I'd grow weary of the close quarters. And the personal area--it's outdoors." Ellen sighs heavily. "I'm afraid the grit and grime of shared living quarters has always been just a bit too much for me."

"Oh, Ellen..." Tigh rolls his eyes in irritation.

"Did you have somewhere else in mind?" Laura asks.

"We're not going to talk about that," Tigh interrupts.

Laura smiles soberly. "Perhaps Ellen has stories to share about the Cylon camp. I know I'd like to hear about the news. Perhaps we could gather a few people tonight." She makes it sound like a party, waits and hopes for Ellen's reaction.

Tigh shakes his head. Ellen claps her hands together. "That would be lovely. I don't know how much there is to tell--but of course I'd love to see everyone. I've spent so much time with no one very interesting for company..."

Tigh's glaring at Laura, but she doesn't mind that he sees through her strategy. "Colonel Tigh," she says gingerly, "I believe you and I have a few things to discuss as well."

"Oh?" Ellen looks between them, interested. Tigh crosses his arms.

Laura's trying to be casual, but she's aware that she's choosing her words too carefully. "I believe it's important that you and I decide to work together now, before Zarek gains more support in town."

Ellen smiles. "Oh, how is Tom?"

Laura barely glances at her. "He's been very busy."

Tigh's expression doesn't change. "Well," Laura says, turning to Ellen once again. "I'll look forward to speaking more with you tonight."

The meeting itself is, again, well attended. Laura, curiously devoid of hope these past few weeks of eerie stillness, allows herself instead to feel determined. Something must be agreed upon tonight. They have waited long enough. If they are going to resist, they have to start. And though she cares how resistance is accomplished, that it happen at all takes precedence now.

Zarek brings his men, and sits in a corner of the room. Anders is with him, as is Tyrol, she notices--perhaps by default, because of his union. Laura asked the women to work together so that some of them were there, as well. Colonel Tigh is monopolized by his wife and sits with no one, and so she finds that they have gathered together as separate groups. She reads from Zarek's expression that they've noticed the same thing. There is disharmony among them, which is likely what the Cylons want.

Laura pulls Tigh aside; amidst the hum of voices, and chatting like it's a social, Ellen won't notice. "Colonel, I'm afraid I have to press and I am sorry. If you and I do not take a stand, Zarek will."

"He's a damn terrorist," Tigh remarks, unnecessarily.

Laura sighs. "Colonel, I'm afraid you underestimate the need. Someone not only needs to take charge, but someone needs to provide a plan." She watches his face, and realizes she's being foolish. Tigh is not that someone, and even working together, they barely have a chance. She can hardly trust these people to Tigh simply because he was Adama's second in command. She removes her hand from his arm, suddenly longing for Elosha, who knew the scrolls; Billy, who always gave level-headed advice; or even Maya, who is at home with their child. Her need for the Adamas is best left to another time.

Tigh says, "You shouldn't have promised these people something we don't have. All we can do now is try to bring back some Fleet discipline. These soldiers have gotten so sloppy even a second-rate academy would wash 'em out."

"I understand your point," Laura speaks quietly, nodding her head. Ellen is approaching, so she goes on quickly, "I agree that any plan will require discipline. I fear people will always choose order over resistance, and the truth is that these people just don't trust you to provide order, Colonel Tigh."

He turns his head. "And the Cylons can?" he scoffs.

"But they do!" Ellen interjects, too animated. "You don't understand; none of you come into contact with them on a daily basis, but they're the ones rebuilding civilization. We could have lived here for years and never built anything but a tent, but they've given us buildings and running water already!"

"What are you saying?" Tigh demands.

"So you want to live like that? Letting the Cylons choose what we can and can't have?" Cally is on her feet and butting into the conversation. She looks incredulous. Tyrol moves toward them.

"It's not like that," Ellen insists steadily. "They're learning about government and cities from us. They're rebuilding downtown Caprica! If you could just see it!"

Cally's vibrating with anger. "How can you stand here and say that? What's wrong with you? They're not like us! We can't let them take over just because they do things sort of the _*same*_ as we do."

"Stand down, Specialist," Tigh orders, as if he can. Tyrol, who has an arm reached out to restrain his wife, freezes. Everyone looks at Tigh for a long moment, and Laura can only stand back and watch the brief tenuous possibility fall apart before her eyes.

"You aren't in command, Colonel," Tyrol says. Tigh pivots toward him sharply, back stiffening in habitual reaction. Tyrol's face is mild but determined. "The Fleet does not exist on New Caprica."

"You sound just like the Cylons," Tigh growls back. He looks around. "You'd take advantage of the Cylon government to rid yourselves of responsibility? Lot of good that will you. You'll all wind up in hack on _Galactica_ when we get off this frakking planet."

"The Colonial Fleet was rendered obsolete the moment the Cylons annihilated the colonies," Zarek declares quietly, overruling the attention on Tigh. "The only reason it survived in any form is because of Adama's leadership and the people who were loyal to him." Laura is obstructed by Tigh's back, but she can see everyone around her is listening. Zarek goes on, "Adama isn't here now. We have to fend for ourselves. But Tigh's right: we're useless without direction. We have a common enemy, and it's not ourselves. We should not have to follow a leader who would sell us out to the Cylons, or a leader we can't trust. Our leader," his voice raising, "should be someone we can all agree upon. I'm not talking about Baltar," his voice drips with disdain. "I'd be the first to agree that he's sold us out, and I motion we take a vote right now to impeach him as President of New Caprica. Maybe the Cylons can force us to recognize their government, but not our own, because without the will of the people, _*our*_ government does not exist!"

Laura watches the people in the tent look at each other, and the excitement in the eyes nearby. She closes her eyes and raises her hand. "I--" She clears her throat and steps forward, to confront Zarek face-to-face. "I'll second the motion."

Zarek meets her gaze. He is mildly surprised. She can live with that. "We need to take action," she says, speaking clearly. She stands by her former enemy and looks at the rapt crowd. "To do that we need to work together. Demanding our rights, the rights that have been a mainstay of our civilization, may be a step toward freedom, and that is something we can all do. United."

"Then let's take a vote," Anders suggests loudly.

"Everyone should be involved in this," Laura says quickly. "The best thing we can do now is spread the word."

"But what if the Cylons hear?" Cally asks, uncertain.

"Let them," Zarek responds quickly. "Let them hear that the humans are restless. They've made a mistake in thinking they can placate us with food and shelter, like animals. It's time to determine where we truly stand."

Zarek catches her arm as the meeting disperses. With Tyrol standing nearby, he says, "You did the right thing."

She appraises him sternly. "I will not allow this to become a dictatorship. Our freedom from the Cylons comes first, but I only trust you as long as I'm working right by your side."

He smiles slightly. "I know that, Laura." Her eyes narrow at his use of her first name. He glances at Tyrol.

"I just thought you might as well know," Tyrol says to them, stepping into the confidence of their conversation, "Some of my crew has been working on a few side projects for awhile now."

"Like what?"

Tyrol looks between them. "Guns. Bits and pieces here and there, parts that don't look like much but once we get them together, they ought to do the job." He stops to scan the room over his shoulder before he lowers his voice further, "And Blackbird parts."

"The stealth jet?" Laura questions.

Tyrol nods the affirmative. "Just thought--if they came back. It might be something we'd want to have." He shrugs. "I knew the plans inside out. Had some time on our hands."

Zarek claps a hand on his shoulder, just for a moment. His face is warm with warfare. "Sounds like a good start, Chief."

* * *

Kara stares at the wall blankly. It's all she can do sometimes to raise her fingers, dripping of orange paint, and drag them along the surface. Two weeks ago, she painted this wall with agitated streaks of bright red. This week, she's painted sitting before it on the floor and hasn't reached further than her head.

Leoben crouches at her side, and says her name with a fond smile. She gives him a dirty look. He touches her forehead with the back of his hand, unruffled. "You feel alright?"

She glares at him again and pulls away. He shifts out of the way of her goopy hand when she raises it to the wall again. Puddles of paint are slowly gathering along the floorboard, where she didn't bother protecting them. She smirks spitefully when she sees orange on the hem of his shirt.

"It's normal for you to feel lethargic in your first trimester," he offers soothingly.

"Frak you," she replies dully.

He doesn't answer; she doesn't turn to see where he disappears behind her, but hears him moving and picking up cans. She presses her thumb to a empty place on the wall and examines the orange imprint she left. "I bet the frakking Cylons pregnancies don't feel like this."

"I wouldn't know," he replies after a minute. She stares at her uninspired wall and sighs. She scoots on her butt until she can see what he's doing and stares at the lines of blue and green on the wall to her left. "Are you painting a damn stream on my wall?" She flicks her fingers at him and he laughs, warding off the flying paint. A slash of orange mars the serene scene he's painted.

She goes still. "How can you do that? How can you--create?"

He dips his brush back in the blue can. "I've watched you work. Maybe I'm just imitating."

She scowls. "No. You're not." She doesn't know why it bothers her, but it does. It bothers her more than the nausea that woke her up this morning; more than the creeping certainty that the weeks are going to keep passing while she's trapped by their plotting and by her own body as well. The time she was convinced would be worth the price will dwindle to nothing at all, and she will be left here painting with this machine that shouldn't be able to recognize abstract thought, much less recreate inspiration on a wall.

Leoben touches the brush to the wall and strokes firmly, widening his stream. "The baby should have something peaceful to look at."

Kara tenses and turns away. "You want babies because they're easy to brainwash," she accuses.

"They come into the world devoid of fear and preconceived notions. They don't yet stink of the conventions of humanity."

Kara snorts loudly, and mocks him back. "So it's not our innate nature that bothers you. If you could reprogram us all it would suit you fine."

He chuckles softly. "Your great fear of change is what keeps you from finding peace. You cling to a history of mistakes and you model your gods to follow you instead of following your gods. But even humanity cannot halt destiny. Destiny makes us all equals."

"Frak you and your destiny, Leoben. I'm not here because it's my destiny. I'm here because you came and you found me and _*you*_ brought me here."

"You cannot see where you belong because you refuse to," he replies simply. "You can't believe that you are special, but it's true."

She glares at his back. "You know, I've been thinking about that. Who says I'm so special? You? You didn't choose me. They threw Boomer at both Helo and the Chief to see which one stuck, and it happened to work out with Helo. They put you with me because we were supposed to be the most compatible. You just did what you were told!"

He keeps painting, and she lets the hatred grow and burn inside her chest. She wants it to choke her. It's the only choice she has.

"And you? Why do you choose when you choose?" He's like the psych counselor asking her how she feels.

She ignores him. "Doesn't that bother you? That you were told to love me and you're just following orders? A _*human*_ would be angry."

"Love is its own end, Kara." He shakes his head slowly, not looking away from his paint. "Both Eights--each copy of Sharon--had a separate mission. Each of us has our own path; through nature, we unite. We become a larger plan."

"So how do you know you have faith in the right thing?" she demands. "All this stuff about annihilating the human race, and then Six has the big revelation that maybe that wasn't really god's plan. How do you know you're on the right _*path*_ , Leoben?"

Leoben's eyes are too clear when he gazes back at her. Untroubled, like in that room where she interrogated his twin. "This seems familiar, doesn't it?" he says softly. "All this has happened before..."

She puts her palm up, sharply. "How do you know, Leoben?" she demands.

"You thought you had been rewarded for your faith," he murmurs, watching her through lowered eyelids, resting his brush against the rim of the can. "You thought your faith brought you back to him, kept him alive. You couldn't turn down what you'd been given. You tried to believe in peace, but you didn't see the water rushing toward you while you were standing on shallow ground. It wasn't the answer to prayer, Kara. You tried to make your own way and you were swept away because you made your stand in the wrong place."

She licks her dry lips and for a moment, she lets her hair fall over her face, screening her from inspection. "You seem to have all the answers. Why is it that god's way always seems to be your way?" He's observing her patiently and it irritates her. She raises her chin, flicking her hair back.

"We do not cling to those things which would prevent us from following the path god has laid out for us. We follow the way."

"You don't have a life to lose if you're wrong," she shoots back.

She thinks he might hesitate--barely a moment, but it's a definite tell. "Could you love a man who can't die?" he answers quietly.

She pulls away, gets her hands under her and manages to stand. She feels vaguely dizzy, and waits for it to pass. He's risen to his knees when she opens her eyes, and she pulls the orange paintbrush out of the can, drizzling a trail of paint across the floor as she approaches him. Standing over him, she starts painting a bright ball of sun over his grass and his trees. "What will you do to me if I frak up your big plan, Leoben? Torture me the way I tortured you? Didn't you tell me it could happen like that?"

He puts his arms around her waist, holding her up. He rests his chin on the bone of her hip and speaks into the bare skin above her pants. "Whatever happens is what is meant to, Kara. Even a mistake can be swept away."

"I don't really think you can adapt," Kara says. She thinks about Helo, stupid Helo who thought Sharon could change--or would, for him. "You're spouting the same program you always have."

She feels his teeth, his tongue against her skin. "I know what you're thinking." In her sky, the sun shivers and drips. "You're wondering, when the time comes, whether you'll still be able to kill me. You haven't changed, either." His lips move in a smile. "I wouldn't want you to."

She drops the paintbrush and grabs his hair. He looks up at her, innocent eyes and now orange-tipped hair standing up on end. "I will never give in," she says, her voice cracking but determined. "No human could ever be loyal to a _*machine*_ unless they thought they'd get something out of it."

He tugs by the belt loops on the back of her pants. She's too tired to remember why she has to stand, and collapses into his lap. He falls back against the floor, pulling her with him. She lays her head on his chest. "Leoben," she says, fingers going to the edge of the bandage on his right bicep. "Why did you pick that name?"

"I didn't," he answers, stroking her hair. "It was part of the plan."

* * *

Kara steps delicately, moving on bare feet down the moonlit hall. She's always made this trip alone, but she doesn't want to start running into anybody now. Especially another Leoben, while hers is back in her room, probably awake and listening from bed.

In the head, she checks the rest of the room for lurkers, as always. She uses the toilet and then pulls her night-shirt off in front of the mirror. Everytime she's in here, she forces herself to check. She's afraid someday she will look at her body and not recognize it.

There's a soft knock, more like a rasp of fingers across the outside of the metal door. "Kara." The whisper sounds strained. She yanks her shirt back on and opens the door. It's Gaeta. He quickly pushes past her and closes the door.

"I'll be done in a minute," Kara says coolly, staying close to the door.

He looks at her nervously, eyes trained properly above the neck. "I didn't know how else to talk to you in private," he whispers.

She shrugs. "What are you doing here, then?"

"Baltar sleeps here sometimes," he replies, shooting looks at the door. "I've been approached by the former president. And Zarek."

"Roslin? And Zarek?" Kara crosses her arms over her breasts, pulling the sleeve of her shirt back up on her shoulder.

"They've formed a resistance. They asked whether you could provide any intel to them."

Kara swallows hard. Gaeta waits on her anxiously, his posture getting more tense. Finally, she shakes her head. "They're too careful. I don't know any of their plans."

He looks disappointed. "Nothing?"

She shakes her head again.

"Okay," he says. "I'll tell them." He pauses. "If they provide materials, can you plant sabotage?"

She nods immediately. "You bet."

He nods, and turns to open the door. "Wait," she says quickly, stopping him. "The Cylons. I think they're here by themselves."

"What?"

"I don't think they were supposed to be here." She shakes her head. "They might not have a resurrection ship."

His eyes register the words, and he nods again. "I understand."

She grabs the lapel of his shirt. "If I could plant a bomb at the right time, it might give us enough time--if there was a rescue. It might even wipe them out."

"Okay," he says.

She gestures for him to move away from the door and opens it herself. She nods without looking back, shuts off the light, and walks, cold and alone, down the empty hallway back to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occupation: The Ordeal of New Caprica. What's more important: survival or resistance?

"I just want to know if this is part of the prophecy."

"Excuse me?" Laura looks up from her work. She's been lost in her thoughts and consumed with the ball of yarn in her lap. This work is truly better left to those who know what they're doing. She has never been very good with her hands.

"Do the Scriptures say that we will escape from the Cylons this time?" The circle of women are looking at her expectantly. Cally, expression earnest, is sitting on the edge of her chair. "Will we really be rescued?"

"Cally, you know I can't guarantee that," Laura responds evenly, her hands stilled. "I can only guarantee that if we give up on rescue, it will not happen. We have to be ready. And we are doing what we can to be prepared," she looks around the circle at each of them. "We're doing that right now."

"Do you remember any of the verses about rescue from a strange land?"

Laura hesitates, her mind reeling back over the Scriptures. She has read too much Pythia, perhaps, and not of the rest. The women expect her to know this. Maya calmly sets the sock she's working on to the side. "We've been rewriting verses as we remember them," she says. "Perhaps the verses about exodus are already written down."

"Yes," Laura murmurs, "Of course; thank you, Maya."

Laura's voice is steady as she reads to them, piecing together bits others have remembered with her own memory of the stories. In this much, at least, she feels she's not offering them anything more than they can have.

Laura glances at Maya out of the corner of her eye. She put down her work when the baby woke up, and now Isis is sitting on her lap. Her small hands are wrapped around Maya's fingers and she's propped up as if she were listening to the Scriptures. It's unusual for her to be so still of late. Maya smiles back at Laura. Laura continues softly, distinctly recalling how it ends, "And in their deliverance, the people were fruitful and multiplied, and replenished the land."

Cally says something that makes the other women laugh, and as Maya turns away from her, Laura stares at the child. She wasn't sure what to do with this baby when it was born. Sometimes she still wonders if she made a mistake in letting it live. Now, she wonders if the feelings she's developed for Isis are affecting her judgement. When the baby shows signs of heritage from the machines, will she see it?

"No matter how much things change, some things sure do stay the same." Laura looks up and realizes the women are studiously pretending they can't hear the argument taking place outside in the middle of the street. Laura stands up quickly, setting the tightly written pages on her chair.

Ellen Tigh is clinging to Tom Zarek's arm. "You promised me--if you were ever in a position..."

"Ellen," Laura intervenes, rapidly crossing the street to them. "This is not the place for this."

"Oh, fine for you to talk, _*Laura*_. You always seem to align yourself with power." Ellen wheels on her. "And with such grace, such benevolence." She gives them both scathing looks. "Meanwhile, my husband is the ranking military officer on this planet! Don't you think his experience is slightly superior to that of a terrorist or an ex-president? Or are you all determined to get yourselves killed instead of being reasonable?"

Laura and Zarek exchange a look. "I certainly agree Colonel Tigh should be involved in our plans, Ellen," Laura says quietly. "Unfortunately your husband seems to find the idea of working with Mr. Zarek and I impossible. If you disagree, perhaps you should be speaking to him."

"We can't trust her," Zarek says as they watch her dismiss herself and hurry back into town, her mincing step skirting the open-air stalls. "She knows too much."

Laura bows her head. She tells herself it would be foolish to ask whether Ellen Tigh would truly sell information to the Cylons. "What would you suggest?" she says instead.

The look he gives her is appraising. "Cut her out of the loop completely. Colonel Tigh as well."

Laura nods. "Without Ellen Tigh, we lose any chance of regular communication with Lieutenant Gaeta."

Zarek shrugs. "It's too risky to be in regular contact. He's got to be heavily scrutinized every time he speaks to one of us."

"What about Kara Thrace?" Laura keeps her voice quiet, and watches the street. The name tends to attract attention, and she's not sure how much of Zarek's plans Samuel Anders has been told.

"If we use her, we can only use her once."

Laura breathes out slowly. "We'll let her sit there until she suits our purpose. Gods know what they're doing to her."

"Nothing else to do," he replies, impassively. "We're not ready to move and we may not be for awhile. If she's as good at her job as everyone says, she'll be ready when the time comes."

"I encourage you to remember these are people we're dealing with, Mr. Zarek," Laura returns tersely. "Unlike machines, humans have limited endurance." She walks back across the street to get out of the bright sun.

* * *

"Why can't you do it?" Kara complains for the fifth time. Unfortunately, Leoben does not tend to give in when it comes to this. He's been drawing her blood regularly himself since Simon confirmed the pregnancy, but this morning he warned her that Baltar would be visiting the room to do some tests. "What does frakking Baltar know about giving birth?"

Leoben walks over to the door and opens it before anyone knocks. "I hope the patient is being cooperative," Baltar says, dropping his bag on the chair by the door before he even looks toward the bed. Kara glares at him, keeping her feet firmly on the ground. He ignores her as he violently shakes out his gloves, and she doesn't react when he comes toward her his fingers spread and looking completely different than the last time she saw him. His eyes are red-rimmed and his hair is more in need of a trim than it ever has been. He looks thin.

She tilts her head to the side. "What's the matter, Mr. President?" She purrs. "Those humans giving you trouble?" She grins broadly. "Sex life wearing you out?"

He taps his heel, automatically shaking the folds out of his pants. "I might ask you that same question, Ms. Thrace, except your choices are quite obvious." He flicks his gaze down at her stomach. She kicks him in the kneecap.

"Ow!" His eyes blaze back at her, and startling enough, for a moment she thinks he might slap her across the face.

"Gaius." Six's voice cuts between them sharply, twisting his furious gaze. He looks at her over his shoulder. She's standing next to Leoben in the doorway.

"Gee, sorry," Kara says, sweetly. "Hormones." She eyes Six viciously. "You know how it is; oh--maybe you don't."

Six crosses her arms, hip cocked against the doorframe. Kara rolls her eyes. "Oh, fine," she sighs and flops back onto the bed, arms draped over the other side. "Leoben, you want to come over here and make sure his hands stay where they're supposed to?"

Leoben crosses to the side of the bed behind Baltar, and Six stands over his other shoulder. Kara stares at the ceiling and smirks. "This is fun. We should do this more often." No answer. She keeps staring at the ceiling, following the lines of panel with her eyes. "Aren't you guys having fun?" She pauses, considering. "Nothing wrong, is there?" Her voice betrays her, wavering slightly.

Six answers immediately, her voice soft. "Nothing's wrong. It's beautiful."

"Excuse me?" Kara turns her neck to peer down at Six, but she catches sight of Baltar's expression instead. One hand on Kara's raised knee, he's staring up at Six's face. Arms still crossed, her expression composed as always, there are tears on her face. Kara freezes in that position, until she realizes Leoben is studying her. She drops her head back onto the bed with a thump.

Baltar clears his throat. "Well, everything looks--fine--here." She hears him snap off his gloves and his chair scrapes across the floor as he moves away from the bed.

"You can go now," Six dismisses him, distantly.

Kara still doesn't move. "But we need a fourth for bridge," she complains, easily summoning up a whine. She rubs her forehead with the back of her thumb, staring at the ceiling and waiting.

Leoben's hand slides up her leg. "Kara's teaching me their game," he remarks. "The card game."

"The card game?" Six repeats, oddly pleased.

"Taught it, you mean," Kara replies. "He catches on quick, big surprise. Unfortuantely I'm fresh out of cubits just now." She heaves a sigh, dropping her feet to the floor as Leoben lays his head across her stomach. "And Triad's not made for two players. Not if you really want to play. Isn't that right, Baltar." She doesn't bother looking up. "Want to play, Six?" Fingers combing through Leoben's spiky hair, she sighs again. "There's nothing to _*do*_ around here."

Baltar is shuffling around by the door. "That is a ridiculous suggestion. I certainly have better things to do than--"

"Gaius," Six interrupts him again. "I think we should play. I'll have a table brought in."

"And food!" Kara sits half way up, Leoben's sprawling pose holding her back.

"Cards," Leoben adds mildly. "We need cards." She absently traces the curve of his ear with her fingers, the weight of his head heavy against her stomach.

They offer her a deck of regulation Triad cards. "Will these work?"

"They'll do," Kara says, holding them between her palms. She wonders who the last human to hold them was. Were they confiscated in town?

It took her too long to think of this: a card game, her preferred method of meeting and sizing up people. Kara acknowledges to herself that she's been trying too hard to separate man from the machines, and it's time to change tactics. So they sit down around the square table and she observes the players. Six's hands are quick with the cards; Baltar looks perpetually nervous. The only reason he's ever won against her is because he's so full of erratic ticks he's hard to read. Leoben and Six are killer Triad players, of course. The only time an expression crosses their faces, it's something they want her to see. Eying them across the table now, however, Kara knows she's won hands from tougher players. Maybe they're not as mysterious as they think.

"Something funny?" Baltar looks singularly unamused. Kara laughs outloud.

"I can't believe I'm playing cards with a couple of Cylons." She grins widely. Leoben tosses the shriveled green bean in his hand at her head. "Thanks, I'll take that bet," she laughs, popping it between her teeth.

He laughs softly, not really at her but as though he sees something in his damn streams or the invisible pattern in his head. Kara taps the table. "Might want to help the new girl out there, Mr. President."

Baltar looks up, ignores Kara's tone, and starts to scoot toward Six. She leans away from him as she studies her cards. "I'm fine." Baltar stops. "It's mathematical," she concludes, with the confident expression of a born sucker.

"Only partly," Kara retorts with a grin. "Right up until you leave and I keep all the cookies." She screws up her face. "Next time we have to play for something you actually care about. Do you even _*eat*_?" She eyes Six speculatively. "I think you're losing all the weight I'm gaining." She licks her lips and tosses a handful of vegetables into the pot. "Warned you Baltar couldn't keep you happy."

"I don't think that is entirely your concern." Baltar says, mildly, because he just won the round. Leoben starts gathering the cards.

"What happened to your shoulder?" Six's gaze is fixed on Leoben. He keeps shuffling without answering. Then he passes the cards to Kara and shoves up his short sleeve. Six reaches over and touches his arm. "It's a scar," she declares obviously. Her fingertip traces the mark. "Did you let her do it herself?"

Leoben nods.

"Tangible proof," she says. Must be some kind of Cylon code-word. She looks at him closely, then stands up. She gets up and walks over to him in order to study the K and the T etched in scar tissue across his shoulder. She touches it softly, not as though it might hurt but like it might disappear. Kara watches her rapt expression, and then she watches Baltar watch her. He gets fed up after a few moments of this and tries to laugh it off.

"That body is permanently scarred. Aren't you supposed to hand those in to be counted when you're done?" A second before the rest of them turn to stare at him, Baltar catches himself.

"Oh, nice one, doc," Kara snaps. "The only tangible thing you'd notice are bigger breasts."

Six calmly sits back down. Her posture is composed, but her eyes blaze fiercely. Kara glances at Leoben, his hand now covering his bared shoulder. His eyes are closed, but as she's looking, he opens them and gazes back at her. Kara leans back in her chair.

"Gotta wonder how you manage to stay president," Kara drawls, green bean hanging out of her mouth. "I'd've gone out of my way to impeach you first thing."

Baltar twitches. Kara, watching him underneath her bangs, lets out a laugh of delight. "Hit a little close to the mark there, Baltar?"

Six is observing the exchange with interest. "They've handed in some sort of petition," she remarks. "They want Gaius to step down." Her smile is vindictive. "Don't they, Gaius."

"As if a convicted terrorist could do a better job!" Baltar burst out, flipping his hair back, then combing across his forehead compulsively. "They've been ungrateful ever since we settled here. Nothing is good enough."

Kara grins. "What are you, like the last person on this frakking planet to realize you're a terrible president? I'm not even sure you were that great a scientist." She raises her eyebrows. "You weren't very good at keeping track of the Cylons." She slides her eyes toward the two of them sitting at the table and smirks.

Leoben sets two more slightly stale cookies in the center of the table, comfortable to let her talk.

Baltar opens his mouth and closes it again, abruptly. "I certainly don't have to listen to this," he says, tossing his cards down. "Not even from the Cylon's chosen one," he sneers, enunciating the words.

"Careful, Gaius," Six says. Her voice is soft and hard at once. She unfolds gracefully and stands. "It's getting late. We're leaving now."

"Guess I win the cookies after all," Kara remarks, sliding out of her chair. Baltar casts her a dirty look, trailing after Six without a command.

They watch the door close behind them, and Leoben turns to Kara, who is still flushed with pride. "I know what you're trying to do," he tells her.

"Oh, right," she answers flippantly. "You see the truth in the stream, rocks in the river, whatever." She smirks. "I have excess energy to burn off," she says, bouncing into a boxing pose. "I'm just distracting myself. It's a human thing." She turns away and pulls her shirt off over her head, freeing her hair and vigorously shaking it out over her shoulders. "You know what else we do for fun?" She teases him by swaying her hips. He stays there by the door.

"You want me to come after you," he says, strangely, as though they're off the grid. She rolls her eyes at him.

"Apparently human distractions are lost on you."

He tilts his head. "Distractions."

"Yes. What did you think? That we were making love?" She mocks him. "I don't love you, Leoben."

That makes him smile, startling in its appearance. "That's what you always tell them."

She scowls. "What do you know about it? Rivers, streams...you're trying to find a pattern where there is nothing." She drops her shirt and jabs a finger at her chest. "You can't predict _*me*_ , Leoben."

He's unswayed. "Unpredictability is its own pattern, Kara," he says.

"Well, I wish I could figure out yours, then," she mumbles, reaching down for her shirt. "Frakking moody Cylons."

He crosses the distance between them before she straightens up again. Kara reaches out for him, looping her arms around his neck. "That's more like it." He's still watching her strangely. Maybe she's managed to surprise him, after all. But she can't have him analyzing her plans. She puts her mouth to his, but he barely reacts. She has to take charge, and she suspects he knows she's always the proactive one. She hates that in this he makes her honest. She kisses him. She runs her fingers up and down his neck, his back, while he leaves his hands on her hips and holds her steady there. She sighs. "Come on," she says. "Don't you want to frak me."

He doesn't answer her. She kisses him again. "I love you, Kara," he murmurs.

She bites his lip, hard enough to taste blood. Still tastes human. "Frak you," she replies. "Frak you, Leoben." She pulls away, but can't escape his hold. He doesn't even brace himself. She glares at him, before she arches back up to his mouth. "Gods," she mumbles. "I hate you. I hate you, you frakking toaster."

He licks his lower lip, cleaning the cut. His tongue meets hers. She goes limp with relief when he kisses her back.

* * *

Laura raises her face toward the sky and smiles, but she keeps her eyes closed against the view of Cylon ships. "This is the only time this planet is pleasantly tolerable," she says to Zarek, inhaling deeply. "It smells like spring."

"That's the trees the Cylons have planted along the border of the city," Zarek replies.

Laura quirks her lips. "How dare they give us clean air," she comments easily. "We will have to boycott it immediately."

One side of Zarek's mouth lifts. "Resistance is hard work," he remarks dryly. It's not quite amused and not quite friendly, but she takes it as a good sign anyway.

"I heard a vicious rumor about you, Tom," Laura murmurs, eyes on the street, both of them scanning for danger--something more than the Cylons, something they may not recognize. She doesn't know when she became so paranoid.

"I'm not surprised, Laura," he returns.

"Apparently you've been quite outspoken about some plan to set fires on the outskirts of town." She grimly observes his silence. "You make a lot of people feel safer with the Cylons."

"That's the whole point, isn't it?" He shakes his head. "They've tricked themselves into collaboration and consider it righteous."

"We already have frightened people hoarding supplies. If you push too hard, they will turn on us." She breaks her own rule and faces him, showing her concern. "Neighbors will begin spying on neighbors. It's not right, and it's not wise in the long run, but if nothing else these people have grown _*realistic*_. They know we are entirely dependent on the Cylons. If there is any chance of ensuring their own safety and the safety of their families, they are going to take it."

Zarek crosses his arms. "Humanity needs protection from themselves. They always have."

"It's important for the protectors to remember they are humans themselves." Laura turns back to the street. "So I've found," she tacks on mildly.

"That's what you're here for, Laura," Zarek replies, without inflection. Before she can answer, they hear the stomping sound of the Cylon centurions. Laura looks around at the still-busy street, alarmed.

"They're early," Zarek says, uncoiling and looking for action. "Something's going on."

Anders appears in a doorway across the street, hanging onto the doorframe and still catching his breath. "They've got the Tighs," he gasps.

And then people came rushing, pushing, around the corner, running to get far enough away to turn and watch. Down the street, the centurions have made an impenetrable circle around a now-abandoned market stall. Standing in the cleared space in the middle is the blond Cylon and a Sharon model--Laura guesses they're the leaders, the ones who confronted Baltar when the Cylons first arrived. On their knees in front of them are Ellen and Colonel Tigh.

Standing at the head of the street, Laura asks Zarek, "Can we do something now?"

But he's looking at Gaius Baltar, standing with his arms crossed uncomfortably under the shadowed overhang of the neighboring stall. "Isn't it the job of the president to intercede for the citizens?" Zarek says loudly. Baltar barely acknowledges him, and Laura follows Zarek up the street, her own anger leashed in order to let Zarek talk.

"The two people before you have defied the social contract," the blond, the Six, is saying, voice loud enough to carry down the street to the huddle of people listening for every word. "In an attempt to gain power for themselves, they mock god's plan." Her gaze as she circles the Tighs is condescending.

Baltar's nervous state is hidden under his usual thin veneer of superiority. "I certainly did everything I could for them," he defends, as though breaking under his own doubt. "There's only so much--" He cuts himself off. "It's better, they'll be alright."

"What are the Cylons going to do to them?"

"They promised not to kill them," Baltar replies.

Laura shakes her head in disgust and turns to see the Six pulling Ellen's head back by the hair, the woman crying, "Don't kill us please! We'll cooperate! I know something, I know what you want!"

"If there was ever a time you were going to use your spine and stand up for something right, now would be it, Baltar."

"It has to be done!" Baltar protests, working up to uneasiness. "If people would just do what they said. It's an important condition of social cohesion, you see? Can't people see reason!"

"No, doctor," Laura sighs. "Obviously, they cannot." She steps away from him, as Ellen Tigh grows more hysterical.

"I know what you want," Ellen insists. "It's the Cylon child!"

Laura freezes. Oh gods. No, no, the Colonel couldn't have been so stupid as to tell Ellen Tigh. But the words just keep coming, "It's not dead, it's not dead."

Baltar pushes past Laura urgently, drawing closer to the Cylons. "Valerii's child?"

"What?" The model that looks like Sharon yanks Ellen away from Six's hands. "What are you talking about?"

"The baby's alive," Ellen repeats, persistently thoughtless. "The baby's here. They're hiding it here. In town," she licks her lips and droops gratefully when the Eight drops her head.

Eight turns and looks urgently at the Six. "The child is alive! My child!"

"We have to find her," Baltar adds forcefully.

Six answers nothing, but turns on her heel. "Bring them," she says to a centurion.

Laura backs away quickly, ducking inside the next stall with Zarek. The Tighs are yanked to their feet and forced to march, stumbling in a hurry to avoid metal heels, and back toward the outside of the city. Baltar walks with Six and Eight behind them, gesturing emphatically as he talks with his hands.

Laura and Zarek stand side by side, backs against the wall, waiting patiently. His sleeve brushes her hand and the stall smells oddly like strawberries. "You'd better tell me what's going on," Zarek speaks quietly, and she nods. Her heart is pounding, and it's not because she hadn't considered the secret getting out, but because she's suddenly certain there are few people who will care. She's built a bond with this baby--and with Maya--but the child is still part Cylon. No one will go to war for her. And she can't ask it of them.

* * *

Kara has no idea what Leoben is doing, but she would probably enjoy her time alone more if she did. Ironically, being near the Cylons is much better than being isolated from them; either way she's surrounded. At least while she fraternizes, she might learn something.

But today no one's talking to her. She eats breakfast, which is still terrible, and the skin-jobs observe her, respectfully, from afar. Even the Leoben models have stopped approaching her. She goes for a walk and knows she's being watched closely, but she remains solitary.Then they're quite happy to feed her again, but she gives up on conversation and takes her snack back to her room. She's digging out her things for a shower when someone knocks on her door. "Finally," she says, and opens it to a tense-looking Gaeta. She steps back quickly and lets him in. "Well?"

"I passed on the message," he speaks briskly. "They asked if you have some way to conceal weapons."

"Still Roslin and Zarek?" she asks. He nods.

"What kind of weapons we talking about?"

"Guns. Maybe some kind of small grenade. They don't know how often I'll be able to talk to you, so they want you to have them just in case."

Kara shakes her head. "It's too risky. Leoben sleeps in here. He could see them anytime."

Gaeta hesitates. "Okay," he says simply. "I'll try to get them to you when you need them instead."

"How long will it be? Are they close?" Kara demands urgently.

Gaeta frowns. "I don't get that impression."

Kara stares at him. "How long are they going to wait?"

He shrugs, already looking at the door. "Just be ready."

"Gaeta," Kara says sharply. "It has to be soon. I can't wait."

She sees his dark eyes flickering through logistics. Gaeta might be good with computers, but he obviously has no idea what's going on in front of him. She grabs his hand. Startled, his eyes fly from her face to her belly where she places it. "If they wait too long, I won't be able to do anything," she bites out. He jerks his hand away like her skin burned him. "You tell them to hurry," she hisses.

"Right," he stammers. "Right." He starts to back away, but refocuses with impressive abruptness. "But I don't think there's anything they can do, Captain. They--they just aren't ready. They've just begun to organize. They just have bits and pieces of plans and they're still arguing over tactics. Roslin and Zarek can barely work together and no one completely trusts them." He swallows and closes his mouth over the rush of honesty. "I'm sorry," he adds quickly, stepping back. He watches her as he's leaving hurriedly, eyes dark and penitent.

And Kara stands there less stunned than jaded. She knew enough not to expect military precision, but with all the months that had gone by, she'd told herself it was reasonable to hope somehow they'd be more prepared.

In the head, she looks at herself in the mirror. Her hair hasn't been this long since she was a little girl, before she lost her daddy. She's lost a lot of muscle; even her arms look wimpy these days. And she looks pregnant. Her breasts are fuller and her abdomen is round. She's been wearing Leoben's ugly shirts to hide it. She stares at herself and knows that day by day she'll become more vulnerable. She'll be useless to the resistance and if escape comes, she'll have to be left behind.

Kara steps into the shower. The water's cold when she turns it on and as it warms up, she starts to cry.

Whether Leoben knew she was there or just came looking, she doesn't know, and she doesn't care when he appears in the doorway and steps inside the shower, touching her wet face under the eye. "Kara," he says softly, as if she's given him a gift. As if she's crying for him. She turns her head away and rubs at her puffy face.

"Tears are nothing to be ashamed of," he says softly, and pulls her to his chest. His shirt is getting wet and bitterly, she clings to him. She lets him have her tears.

* * *

Cally comes to her when the mandatory searching begins. Her eyes are bright and fevered, her hair is slicked-back and dirty, and her fingers twist in her hands. "You have to tell them where it is," she says. "If you know--I know you know--you have to tell them. You have to. They're going to take every baby and test them until they figure out which one it is."

Laura quietly sits down and doesn't know what to say. After she told Zarek about Isis, after she went home and asked herself how to tell Maya, she has found herself waiting to see what the Cylons' next move is. Zarek said they would have to watch and see, and though she doesn't know if his promise to keep the baby's actual identity to himself means anything, even having dedicated members of the resistance hovering outside her door on a rotating schedule isn't very comforting. Less so when it's someone like Cally who walks in demanding she give up the child.

"They say Baltar's doing the tests." Cally shakes the tears out of her eyes frantically. "He's not going to care if something happens. The Cylons won't _*care*_ if a baby dies by accident."

"Cally," Laura finally says, "I know you're frightened. I am too. But you know Anders and some of the other men are outside the Cylon camp right now, trying to find out what they're doing. They'll find out what kind of danger there is."

Cally just looks more angry. "You have to give them what they want. You have to. Don't you understand? It's not like it's a choice. They ought to have it anyway."

"Cally..." Laura sighs. She's speaking to a still-new mother, one of the most unreasonable creatures she's ever encountered. She speaks hesitantly. "This is a baby we're talking about. I know you're only seeing her as half-Cylon..."

"It _*is*_ a Cylon!" Cally shouts shrilly, eyes blazing. "You know how they see us, don't you? We're all just humans, all of us the same. They don't see any difference between you or those prisoners on Zarek's ship. We're the ones who try to see it some other way, and that's why we fall in love with them and that's why we get killed. So give it back! Give the frakking baby back to the Cylons!" She stares at Laura, eyes hardened. "If you don't, you'll be just as much a traitor as Baltar is."

She leaves after that, clearly having nothing more to say and not wanting to listen. Laura immediately calls for Maya. "I think we should get you and Isis out of the city," she says, very quietly. It doesn't seem reasonable to think that Cally, even overwrought, could have overlooked the one baby closely tied to Laura. "I'm going to find Zarek. I think we should get all the babies together that we can, and find somewhere to hide them."

Maya's frightened by Laura's shaky voice. "But I thought there was nowhere to hide!"

"We will have to find somewhere," Laura says adamantly, shoving her stocking-clad feet into boots. "People cannot possibly stand by and let them take the children. Stay here until I get back. Don't open the door for anyone," she warns her. Maya shakes her head in agreement, silently watching her go. Her face is filled with confusion, but she trusts Laura enough to do what she says. Laura's not sure that should make her feel better about this.

The people on the street look just as frightened as Maya. They seem more tense than they've been in months. Laura doesn't have to go far to run right into Zarek. He looks energetic. "Well, you were right," he says, grabbing her arm and pulling her with him so they can walk while he talks low in her hear. "The Cylons have done what we couldn't. People actually want to stand up to them. They're frightened again."

"We need to get the children to safety."

He's nodding as she speaks. "The women, I think," he continues. "You stirred them up and now they're sufficiently motivated."

"It won't buy us much time, I know, but there must be somewhere we can take them for now."

"It's risky," he replies, looking around the street. "It will force us into a defensive position that we won't be able to hold for long. Without an escape plan, it's only a matter of time before the Cylons kill us all off." He pounds a fist into his hand. "If only we had a means of retreat!"

They've reached the end of the street and the end of town. Here the roads turn muddy again and, not far away, trails off into the riverbed. Laura looks at the hopeless chaos of steep depressions and open plateaus beyond silently.

"This is exactly the opportunity we've been waiting for, but I--" Zarek's animation cuts off abruptly.

Laura follows his gaze, startled. "Captain Thrace," she breathes. Kara Thrace stands there, attended by four centurions at a distance. They all seem to be spattered with mud.

Kara swallows and looks at the centurions warily. "I didn't expect to see you here," she says, voice husky. She clears her throat. "Could we talk?" She extends a hand toward Laura but doesn't move. Laura doesn't hesitate to step toward her, up to her ankle in mud and into the circle of Cylons. She touches Kara's shoulder tenatively. No one else moves.

The girl looks healthy and unbruised, except perhaps under her dark eyes. She's wearing an ugly flowered shirt that covers her hands. "Are you alright?" Laura murmurs.

Kara says nothing. She bites her lip and, looking uncomfortable, shuffles close to embrace Laura. Laura willingly wraps her arms around her, though hair prickles her skin when Kara nudges her chin close to Laura's neck. "You have to get me out," she says. Her voice is so soft Laura has to tilt her head to hear it. "I can't do this."

Laura strokes her hair. She's not sure how much intuition the Cylon centurions are equipped with, but she speaks just as quietly and tries to limit her words "What is it?"

"I told--don't you feel it?" She presses the length of her body against Laura, but it still takes Laura much too long to understand. She stifles her surprise, clenching her fist around Kara's hair. " _*Please*_ ," the whisper is fierce and ragged in her ear.

One of the centurions shifts toward them. Kara releases her and wheels toward it. "Would you back the frak off?" she screams at its shiny head. "Just back off! Give me a frakking second!"

The centurions move their heads back and forth, as though confused. Laura takes a cautious step back to lower ground and looks over her shoulder at Zarek. He raises his hands innocently, observation intense. Kara shoves at the centurions and they eventually step back several paces. Laura takes a few deeper breaths. "Captain Thrace, I'm so sorry," she manages.

Kara's gaze is hard. "I won't do this." Her hand hovers lightly over her stomach, then drops.

Laura swallows, at a loss. "I didn't realize..."

Kara gives one shake of her head. Her hair flies around her shoulders, golden in the sun.

"Are you--do they let you come close to town often?"

"No," she replies bitterly. "Leoben said I could come see from a distance."

"Leoben is the one?" Laura stumbles over her words, speaking too quickly and still swallowing the choking sense of horror. Kara doesn't have to nod. "How did you convince him?"

She looks away and in profile, her jaw tightens. "I cried." Her face is stony when she adds, "It was an even trade."

"Captain Thrace--Kara--I would do anything in my power to get you out."

Kara licks her lips, struggling with what she's going to say. "You have to at least --just get Doc Cottle to come up with something to get rid of it."

"Kara, I'm sorry, there's nothing..."

"I won't do this for them!" Kara hisses, voice fracturing under the strain of keeping her voice to a whisper.

Laura looks up at her, this strong young woman that most the military men she's met seem to admire, and her eyes are so vulnerable that Laura has to dig her fingers into her own hands. "I'm sorry to put it this way, Captain Thrace," she says evenly, "but your position on the inside is one of the only advantages we have."

She watches the military protocol trickle back into her eyes. Kara refolds into herself, looks down, and wraps her arms around her waist. "It'll be soon?"

Laura looks her in the eye and promises, "It will."

"It has to be," Kara adds after a moment. "It has to be or I won't get out."

Laura wipes her eyes, quickly, while Kara's not looking. "I understand."

Kara barely glances at her before she turns away. Neither of them offer a word of goodbye.

When Laura turns back to Zarek, he is subdued. "She's--" Laura stops herself. She won't pass on another secret. "She needs us to be ready." To his credit, he does not question her further.

Though the need to secure the children is still urgent, Laura can't bring herself to hurry back through town. Zarek takes up her former resolve and heads off to find the others. She tells him she'll meet him at the empty school, and goes back to her own building to bring Maya and Isis. As she's walking, she speaks a silent prayer for all of them, and then for Kara Thrace. "Lords of Kobol, please forgive me..." she whispers, barely able to step across the threshold.

Someone's standing in the shadows. She jumps backward, trips off the doorstep, and squeaks softly. She puts her hand to her chest, instantly recognizing him when he takes a step forward and smiles. "Oh, gods, Captain--Commander--Apollo," she blurts, then laughs at her stammering. "You have no idea how relieved I am to see you."

* * *

Half way through the meeting, Cally enters and hovers near the doorway. Her eyes are wide when she sees Lee Adama sitting in their midst wearing desert fatigues. Laura sees Tyrol grab her hand and squeeze her in beside him on the seat. Faces all around the room are relieved and open, and it's good to see.

Maya grabs her hand. She sees it too. There's life in this room once more. Laura smiles back. If all goes well, the young life back in their apartment will be allowed to exist as well.

"We landed on the other side of the planet weeks ago. It took us longer than we expected to make our way across, and then we had to scout the town. It's changed a lot." Lee Adama took a comforting approach with this group, gathering all of them around him in a circle and inviting them to exchange tales.

Even Zarek is silent and listening.

"How many are here?" Laura asks.

Lee shakes his head, cautioning. "We're advance recon. We had no idea what we were going to find down here. I need to gather intel and get it back to the Fleet. We need to know our assets before we can formulate strategy."

Tyrol scoots forward. "We've been working on a few things ourselves." He looks eager to share. Some of the other men start to speak, and Lee holds up his hand.

"I know you've been through a lot. I'm thrilled to see all of you still alive and kicking down here." He grins at them. "But we have to be orderly about this. I'm going to need to write it all down, make sure we don't miss any details."

Zarek glances at Laura. "We can give you our lists," she says. "We have lists of the parts Tyrol's crew has been working on."

Zareks adds, "And surveillance logs on Cylon activities."

"They're incomplete, but at least it's something," one of the ex-military men continues for him. Lee nods in agreement.

"The problem is, Apollo," Laura speaks up, "we don't have a lot of time. Our tenative accord with the Cylons seems to be compromised..."

The doors bang and everyone jumps. Lee's hand goes to the weapon on his hip, but it's Anders. Wearing black from head to toe, he's soaking wet with his hair plastered to his head. "They're moving!" he shouts. "They're moving them!" His eyes land on Lee, but he barely reacts. "There's no way to know where they're going. They're leaving now. Wait--" His gaze snaps back to Lee. "Do you have a vehicle?"

"Yes, a jeep," Lee says slowly, looking uneasily back and forth from Anders to Laura. "But it's too early to risk exposing ourselves... Who are they taking?"

Anders lists them off impatiently. "Kara, the Tighs...they seem to have a baby."

"A baby!" The room is suddenly abuzz with irate parents. "Whose baby?" There's a general push toward the doors, all of them wanting to rush home and check for their children. Laura is on her feet herself.

"No, it's none of yours." Cally's voice is clear enough to be heard over the commotion, though she doesn't get up. She sits huddled close behind her husband. "It's the Cylon baby. I gave it to Baltar."

Laura abruptly drops back into her seat again.

"They won't be looking for any of ours anymore." Cally finishes, reassuring enough that the others stop their mass evacuation.

"How did you know where it was? Who was hiding it?" The questions change in tone.

Cally raises her eyes to Laura. She doesn't look guilty, but maybe she looks a little sorry. Laura's not sure. There's a horrible silence inside her head, or maybe in her heart.

"What?" Maya leans forward, questioning the aim of Cally's gaze. "Laura?"

Laura swallows back feelings she has no right to, and turns slowly to tell Maya what she's done to her.

"We're wasting time," Anders interrupts. "If we move now, we can follow them in the jeep. Or take them now; it's a small party and they won't be expecting us."

"We can't do that," Lee says, though Laura isn't looking. She stares at Maya bleakly. Maya blinks at her, the glimmer of realization beginning to form in her eyes.

Zarek overlaps with, "We saw Thrace earlier. Laura spoke to her."

"She was out?" Anders' voice is raised, demanding. "Roslin?"

Laura lets go of Maya's limp hand and looks at him. She clears her throat. "She went back in," she says numbly.

"We should get her out!" Anders protests. "She's no use to you inside anymore if they're keeping her at a different location."

"We don't know anything for certain," Laura snaps. "And you have to let it be her choice."

"Her choice?" Anders repeats, his voice low with fury. "It couldn't possibly be her _*choice*_ to be the Cylons' prisoner!"

Behind her, Maya stands and starts moving unobtrusively toward the door.

Lee raises his hand. "Hey..." he says, cautiously placating.

Anders turns his flaying gaze on him. "Oh, don't you even talk to me," he says coldly. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stomps out, banging the door as he leaves. Maya catches it as it swings back and silently disappears in the opposite direction. Laura knows where she's going. She's going to see for herself.

"Okay," Lee says slowly, taking in the confused quiet of the room. "We have a lot of work to do, people, and I can see there's a lot to review. Let's buckle down."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occupation: The Ordeal of New Caprica. What's more important: survival or resistance?

Kara makes life as difficult as possible. When she's in a bad mood, she's as mean and irritable as she feels. The other moods make her bad moods worse, because when she's happy it feels like forgetting: that she's isolated, that she's scared, that the Cylons may have no use for her once they have this baby.

She's never longed for this feeling, or wept for an empty womb, or wanted to be held nights with a warm hand cradling her rounded belly, but it doesn't matter that the choice wasn't hers. She can't ignore the movement of her own child. And she hates how Leoben smiles over her when he feels her belly, because it's not what she expected and it's not something she asked to have, but it's beautiful. So she throws things and she yells at him--at everyone--and she cries and she's sullen in turns, and when she's really, really desperate, she's smiling. And he says he doesn't love one mood more than another. While her own body has shaped itself to his lies, she holds on to her moodiness, because she doesn't know how else to resist.

They moved without warning one night, in the rain. Simon came to her room with a syringe and Leoben told her she wouldn't be drugged if she came with him quietly. So he carried her out of the building, a tarp stretched over their heads by a centurion on either side. They left Baltar behind, agitated and shivering in the doorway of the complex, surrounded by the metal centurions left behind while most of the skin-jobs came with them. Kara mocked him for looking forlorn and confused and muddy, and over Leoben's shoulder, she could see Six smirked at him as well. She and Sharon were sheltering a baby from the rain. Kara hasn't seen it since and she doesn't want to; she's glad they're keeping it to themselves.

There's a surgical suite down the hall, where they examine her weekly. "What happens to me after?" she asks one day, not of Leoben but of Six, who is always around, walking the halls or the grounds aimlessly. Always alone, and rarely interested in talking to anyone. Kara's staring at the ceiling, the brand new whitewashed ceiling. She wonders how long it took them to build this building. She suspects it was done in a matter of hours.

"After?" Six repeats, vaguely.

"I'll have served my purpose. Is there supposed to be more for me in god's plan? Or do I have to accept my destiny and die."

There is no answer. Kara tries to smile at the irony of it all, at the idea that stupid random patterns could turn into a design, but she can't. She turns her head away from the straight lines of the ceiling and tells herself its hormones. When she opens her eyes, Six is standing by her head. Her eyes remind Kara of the ones she sees in the mirror, startling enough to makes her jerk away.

"Sorry, you okay?" Simon ducks his head around to look up her side. "Don't move."

"Frak," Kara says. She didn't feel anything; just cold metal. But Six puts her hand on her arm.

"I don't think god wants you to die yet," she says softly.

Kara stares at her, tries to see through her frakking lies. "But if I did," she persists coldly, "Would it be his plan?"

Six tilts her head, eyes strangely compassionate. "I don't think fighting to live means you lack faith," she whispers. "Life is his greatest gift. Fighting is a sign of respect."

Kara pulls away again. "Leg cramp," she mumbles. Six disappears from view and her hands slide over Kara's knee down to her naked calf, rubbing firm circles in the muscles up and down the back. Kara sighs, because after all, she feels like a constant cramp these days, and Six has skilled hands. She switches to the other side when Simon finishes and keeps massaging further up her legs until Leoben comes back and gestures her back out into the corridor with him. Six flicks the sheet back over Kara and follows him. They're always discussing...things, like a frakking Cylon debate team, and now she doesn't get to overhear any of it.

The opaque door closes behind them, leaving Kara alone in the room. She looks around lethargically. It's completely bare, no windows, no mirrors, no tools or large objects that weren't locked down. Not that it mattered. Sitting up and sliding off this table were about as strategic as she could get right now.

* * *

"I know it's hard," Lee Adama says, and she can see from the lines on his face that he means it, "but we have to look at this as an opportunity. With so many of the Cylons gone, we can move people and parts around more easily."

Laura goes through the process of smiling, because he's watching her profile as she looks out the window. "You can build an entire fleet of stealth ships, Commander Apollo, but you still can't attack the Cylons directly."

"Oh, I don't know," he replies lightly, "we've taken out a base star using a Blackbird before."

She sighs. "But you can't carry out an evacuation simultaneously. The Cylons could kill all of us off before you could destroy their air support, and then what would be the point?"

"Look..." Lee says slowly, "Your plan to plant a bomb inside their complex might still be feasible. We haven't given up on the idea. But for now..."

"Oh, I know," Laura interupts wearily. "For now, we do what we can with what we have and we wait." She turns toward him. "Forgive me, Commander, but we've been waiting this out for so long now, and what we're awaiting constantly seems to move further and further away."

Lee gives her the self-possessed, barely-there smile that first, so long ago on their first meeting, made her want to win his loyalty. "Laura, call me Apollo if you like. I feel like you're talking to my father when you call me that."

This time, her smile feels honest. "It's a bit silly of me, isn't it? But I accept the offer."

"Laura, it's me," Zarek's voice enters the room ahead of his brisk knock. She opens the door, peeking out cautiously into the hallway. He hurries in. "I just saw Gaeta."

"Gaeta? How?"

"He came to me. Baltar sent him on an errand to see me. He had a centurion guard with him, but he passed on a message."

"Not from Baltar?" Lee raised his eyebrow skeptically.

Zarek shrugs. "Apparently Baltar's out of grace with the Cylons, and that makes him more interested in throwing his lot in with us."

"He might be useful," Laura allows. "What does he know?"

"The Cylons should be back in about three months."

"Three months? Why?" Lee asks, but Laura turns away. There's no reason Baltar wouldn't tell, unless Gaeta chose not to pass it on, and she can't watch their faces when Zarek explains. She doesn't want to hear them discuss strategic advantage, not when she herself made that call a week ago. If only she'd had more faith.

"Didn't say. Just that it would be about three months, and then they'd move back to the complex where the centurions are. He says they're planning to start spreading people around, setting up different work camps and towns. Keep us from congregating, I'd imagine. Giving them too much trouble." Zarek sounds proud.

"They'll all be back?" Lee asks. "All of them?"

"Near enough, at least as far as he knows--"

Lee breaks in, "What about Kara and the Tighs?"

"I don't know; but if necessary, _*he*_ can plant the bomb."

"I don't trust him," Laura speaks up quickly, unable to stay silent. She turns around. "I do not want to put these people's lives in the hands of Gaius Baltar."

"I agree with her," Lee says. "Baltar's still a threat, especially if the Cylons start treating him well again. If Starbuck comes back--she's the one I can trust to do the job."

Despite her brief flash of anger, Laura can't seem to escape her sense of weariness. She doesn't add her agreement to Lee's determination, because he sounds resolved and she knows he'll handle it. She feels, more than at any time these past two years, that she can release the burden of playing advocate. She hasn't done a very good job of it. The truth is, her apartment feels empty without Isis and Maya, and it seems to reflect her heart. Even with Lee Adama staying here while they set up routes and supply drops, she feels lost.

Zarek shrugs. "I can agree with that. For now. If she doesn't come back..."

"She'll come back," Lee replies, in a hard voice. Laura's glad to hear it, and even without anyone watching, she almost smiles.

* * *

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kara's screaming at Leoben through a red haze of pain, and she can hear how shrill her own voice is but she can't seem to care. "Frak, frak, frak, frak, frak, god!" Her fingers fist in the front of his shirt and he tries to stroke her hair.

"Kara, don't fight it," he says gently.

"Why can't you give me something!" she yells in his face.

"It's god's way, Kara," Six says, wiping her face and looking completely peaceful. All of them being gentle, so damn gentle because they can't feel the frakking pain. "Pain is the price of life."

"I don't give a flying frak what you--" Kara cries, breathless. "Is this thing coming or what, frakker, god, ah...Leoben. I'm going to...kill you."

He strokes her temple and takes her hand. "Shh, Kara." He murmurs. She digs her fingers in as hard as she can, but his hand is solid. "Frakking toaster," she gasps. He keeps making comforting sounds, murmuring words that sound like prayer, and Six keeps dabbing a cool cloth on her face.

If she just gets the damn job done, it'll all go away. Kara digs her heels in and follows orders: push, Kara. Push. One more time. Good. And she falls back on the bed.

She ignores the sound of a baby crying. She can see dots on the ceiling and in her blurry, sweat-filled gaze, they shimmer like stars.

"Kara, it's a boy. We have a son."

They call her name. "Kara. Look at him. Kara."

It all closes back in, too close and too contained. Kara turns her face away.

Six takes her chin between two fingers and it hurts. "You would turn your face away from your own child?"

Kara jerks away, though escaping her hold feels like it rips off skin. "It's not mine," she whispers. Her voice is weak and she grits her teeth. "I don't want to see it," she manages. "Get it away. Get it away from me." She raises an unwieldy hand to cover her face. She closes her eyes and her fingers smear her tears.

* * *

Lee Adama drops back into the world a week to the day after he was scheduled to return. After a planned absence of eight weeks, passed slowly under the stress of hope, the delay prompted a surprising show of support. People who had hesitated to commit to their plan were suddenly camped out on Laura's doorstep, asking what they could do to help. Needing something to pass the time.

Not everyone will work together, but they will all work toward a goal. There are those who listen to Laura, and those who listen to Zarek. There are even those who only follow Tyrol's word.

When Lee does finally return, slipping out of the night back into their midst, they've cautioned themselves to expect another set-back. But the military component of the plan continues with precision. Lee camps out at Laura's place while he's in town, but she doesn't see much of him. The day he goes back to rejoin the group of soldiers camped several clicks away from town is the first time they're both in the apartment at the same time.

"Laura," he greets her. "I was hoping I'd catch up with you. I'm sorry I haven't sought you out before now."

Laura puts her hands up and shakes her head. "Oh, I am useless in discussions of military strategy, Apollo, or with the munitions you've been passing out. You've been quite busy."

"You have too." He raises his eyebrows. "I expected things to be much more disorganized when I came back. That can't all be Zarek."

She smiles weakly. "Apollo, if I didn't know better, I'd say the gods were smiling on us."

Lee turns to Laura and gives her a little smile. "You know better?"

She responds grimly. "I'm afraid I don't trust good omens anymore."

"I see you've rediscovered Colonel Tigh while I've been gone. That seems like more than a sign."

Laura crosses her arms. "You haven't spoken to him yet. The Cylons discarded him by the side of the road. He faced the elements for days before Anders found him."

He puts his hand on her arm. "I'm sorry, Laura. All I can think about right now is how many people I can get back to the Fleet alive. Beyond that--" He sighs and shakes his head. Then he frowns.

She pats his hand. "You're right, Commander. We should focus on what we're doing now." She smiles. "Tell me about your father."

He laughs softly. Anders interrupts them, walking in off the street.

"I want to know where Kara fits into your rescue plan," he says, without greeting. He leaves the door open behind him. "Apparently Zarek had no intention of ever getting her out, and I want to know if either of you do. Do you?" He looks at Laura.

"If I was capable of getting Captain Thrace away from the Cylons under my own power, believe me, I would have done it long before now," she says simply. Empty words, and she knows it very well.

Anders turns on Lee. "What about you?" he demands. "I thought you and Kara were supposed to be pretty good friends once."

Lee pauses, looking at Anders, his jaw clenched. "My duty is to the Fleet," he says, without emotion. "My loyalty to Kara can't supplant that. I wish it could." His expression remains firm. "But it can't."

Anders nods, slowly. For the first time, Laura sees acceptance wash over his face. "We'll stick to the plan, and I'll do my part. But I won't be going without Kara. Either we both go, or I see for myself that she's dead." He swallows. "That's the way it's going to be."

Lee glances away. "I understand." He meets Laura's gaze briefly, but she sees that he has little time for regret.

* * *

They move back to the larger complex, where there is more noise in the hallways and outside while Kara sits in her room, left alone and staring at the walls. The blobs of yellow she once painted there seem to swirl and slither their way toward her on the bed.

Simon examines her regularly, but when he can't understand her silence or her denial, Baltar is brought in.

"Leoben thought she would feel better back in familiar surroundings," Simon explains, leaning against the wall behind Baltar's chair. Baltar ignores him, and Kara says nothing, as usual.

After a few moments, Baltar reaches for Kara's hand to help her sit up on the edge of the bed. "I think perhaps this requires a bit more than a comfortable bed and a few vegetables." He looks Kara in the eye. "A counselor, perhaps? Someone...human...to talk to?" He stops and looks over his shoulder. "Perhaps you could leave us alone for a few minutes."

Simon hesitates, skeptical. Kara looks up. "Yes, that's right, I need to talk. To a human." She gestures with her hand, dismissively. "Go on, then." Slowly, he straightens, tugs at the hem of the surgical coat he wears when he plays doctor, and leaves them alone.

Kara plants her bare foot low on Baltar's chest. "I'm not in a very good mood, so why don't you just tell me what you wanted to say," she says evenly. He raises his eyes from her foot and wisely does not back up in his chair.

"I have something for you in my bag, Captain Thrace. Felix Gaeta passed it on. I think it would be prudent of you to retrieve it quickly."

She drops her foot and nods toward his bag, which he sets in her lap resentfully. There's a Fleet-issue handgun and a string of homemade grenades buried under his junk. She touches the cool metal of the weapon and takes a deep, clean breath as she pulls it out. Now _*this*_ feels good in her hands. She wraps her other hand around the barrel, then checks the clip. Baltar watches her, fidgety. "You know what to do with those, I take it," he says.

She nods. "When?"

"Tonight. They don't want to take any chances." His voice lowers conspiratorially. "The battlestars are waiting to jump into the system. They have a fleet of Blackbirds to take out the basestar and they're sending in Raptors to airlift civilians out. They need you to plant these before dark so they can be triggered at sunset."

Her dry lips stretch in an unfamiliar expression. "It'll be done." She gently fingers the serial number on the gun.

"Well, I'd best be going now," Baltar says, gathering his things. She thinks his haste is more about being alone with her than raising suspicion. Still, he's the only human around.

"Baltar." He pauses and looks at her impatiently. "Tell them...I won't be getting out," she says slowly. "Go without me."

He hesitates, indifference flickering to concern and back in his eyes. She smiles slightly, because she's been watching walking hardware emote for three months straight and at least he's frakking interesting. "You don't deserve to live," she says coldly. "Just try not to get anyone else killed for your frak-ups."

That gives him permission to leave, irritated. She watches the door swing shut.

She has a few hours. She hides the gun and the explosives in her jacket inside the only wooden thing in the room: the chest she was allowed to build. Then she pulls on a pair of pants and knocks on the door. Simon opens it. "You're up," he states, unsurprised. She cocks her head at him.

"Take me to Leoben."

Leoben is in the nursery, and Kara stops in the door. There are two white cribs side-by-side in the middle of the otherwise starkly unembellished room, and he is leaning far over one. He looks up at her, and appraises her appearance for a moment before he smiles. "You've come," he says simply. He reaches down and picks the baby up, carefully, fingers braced behind its head. He brings it toward her and she holds onto the door. "This is your mother," he says to the baby softly, and raises it up.

"You don't have to be frightened," he says to her softly. She smiles, tightly. He extends the baby toward her. She slowly lifts her arms and he helps her cradle it to her chest. He steps back and looks at them.

Kara looks down at the baby. Her entire body, still sore, feels on the verge of collapse. It's natural for her to clasp the baby tighter for fear of falling on it. The baby's eyes never open; she's thankful for that.

They go back to her room for her jacket so they can take a walk together.

They stroll around the flowering trees and from one building to another, she manages to hold it for awhile. His face lights up as he hovers over them, touching their skin and talking about patterns and rivers, supporting her with his arm around her waist. None of the other Cylons approach them, leaving them free to roam. And when she's planted the last bomb, she says she's tired and he kisses her forehead and takes the baby and understands.

She goes back to her room by herself and sits on the bed, where she intends to wait.

An hour passes and it starts to get dark. She tries to count the seconds in her head but the numbers slip. If it happens, it will happen whether she counts or not. The flowers around Leoben's stream will melt off the walls and blow away in little pieces, and her child will never see them.

Leoben finds her there on the edge of their bed in the shadows. "Hi," she says quickly, responding instinctively. But he grabs her around the waist and pushes her out the doorway. He runs behind her down the hallway, prodding her to keep moving, on through the hallway and outside the opposite direction from the cafe. He doesn't say anything and won't let her stop until they're behind them, the building explodes and it knocks them down in a rush of heat and sound, debris landing feet away.

She looks around, disoriented, to find herself alive. And with Leoben--alive. She waits for other Cylons to appear, but there is nothing but the dull sound of flames rising, and Leoben breathing against her as he helps her to her feet. She wonders--just for a moment--about the child.

"Did you think it would surprise me?" he says quietly, focusing her thoughts. He tucks her hair behind her ear and holds her face in his hands. "You sent their souls to god and I allowed it. And now I will let you go, because that is the way it must be."

She stares back at him, unable to respond out of confusion. "How could you--why-- _why did you save me?_ "

He smiles at her serenely. "Our work is done here, Kara. We are leaving. No more killing; the remnants shall survive, and fight again another day. You can go," he tells her simply. "Go with them. The humans are leaving this planet as we speak."

"You'd just let me go?" she repeats, disbelieving.

He keeps stroking her face. Kara yanks away from him. "You think I won't? Frakking yes, I'll go!" she yells at him, past the numb ringing in her ears.

He reaches for her and she ducks away from him. He catches her arms and yanks her back. The gun, tucked into her waistband, crosses her mind. "If you go, you must leave our child behind," he says, watching her closely. "Are you certain?"

She looks back into his eyes, clenching her fists. She is suspicious, but she knows better than to hesitate on a deal. "Frak yes!" she bites out.

He tilts his head, studying her, and in the dim light of the fire and the setting sun, he looks reluctant. He releases her and steps back. "A life for a life, then." He pauses, mouth turned down. "You think you can shape god's plan with your own two hands?"

"Baltar was right about you, you know," she snaps, angrily. "When this body is gone, you're just another one of them. You're all the same and you all think the same way."

He strikes her across the cheek and her head whips back, wrenching her neck. "Oh ye of little faith," he murmurs.

He takes her hand. He pulls her across the clearing to a jeep parked in the shadows of the trees, and nods to another Leoben, seated behind the wheel. "Find the last of the humans and send her with them," he says. His double nods, silently, and waits. Leoben shrugs off his jacket and puts it around Kara, helping her put her arms into the sleeves. As he does, his hand almost grazes the gun stuck in the small of her back. He holds her by the arms for a moment just to look at her. She stares back at him mutely, rubbing at her neck with one hand. "Do you know why it is god's will I let you leave?" he asks gently. She slowly blinks. She wishes he wanted to fight instead of speak. "Because if you go now, you'll ask yourself what you should have done. You'll wonder...is one betrayal worth the price of loyalty to another?" His lips curve softly. "Stay on the path, Kara." He leans down and kisses her, hard, then lets her go and without pausing turns his back on her and walks the other way.

The Cylon in the jeep clears his throat as she's watching him go--waiting to be sure he's leaving. "Let's go, Starbuck," he urges her. She grabs the metal roof of the vehicle and hoists herself into the seat, gently.

She's tense until they leave the area, and the dense smell of smoke falls behind. She watches him, but he doesn't talk to her. He's silent the whole way, driving as if he knows exactly where they're headed. They drive through town, which seems empty, and bigger than it used to be--not made of tents--and they drive fast, across empty space until they hit another dense wall of trees. He stops and gets out of the jeep quickly, and she follows him.

She can hear something beyond the thick brush, and she knows exactly what it is. She stops and looks at him. It.

It looks back at her with Leoben's face. "You knew where they were," she says. It doesn't answer. It makes it easier. She pulls out the gun and shoots it, twice, until it falls down. "You be sure to pass that message on to him," she says resentfully, looking down at the lifeless face.

* * *

There was a reason she didn't shoot the bastard before they reached the edge of the trees: because she's not only not sure where she's going but she's not sure she can make it by herself. She feels a little dizzy, and excessively hot, which isn't right when the sun is almost down and has taken the warmth along with it.

But as long as she can keep pushing off one tree after another, scraping rough patches on the palm of her hands, and heading toward that low hum of familiar sound a few yards away, she's going to keep walking. She's going to run when she's sure it's a Raptor she hears, because damn if she's going to get left on this frakking planet after everything.

When she sees Sam, standing apart from the humming Raptor, she stops gritting her teeth because for a moment, she sees safety. His eyes light up and he comes running toward her, a hell of a lot faster than she can move right now, so she stops and waits for him, holding her side and panting.

And she sees Leoben in the trees. She jerks toward him, narrowing her eyes, and then she sees in between the trees on both sides of the clearing things are moving. "Stop!" she shouts, understanding. "No! Stop!" She moves for the trees--stupid--her instincts are shot, because when she gets close, one of them steps out and grabs her roughly, shoving her back toward the Raptor. From that direction, Fleet weapons are cocked rapidly.

"You can have her," he shouts as he's pushing her forward. "You can have her if you leave this planet immediately."

"No!" Kara wheels away, spins around the Leoben, and is thrown bodily into Anders' reach.

"Kara," he whispers, shocked and too relieved to recognize what's happening. She's fighting too hard to stop and look at him, and as he's trying to gather her to his chest she's trying to get away, trying to put significant distance between them. She's looking at Leoben, standing close inside the shelter of trees, when he lowers his upraised hand and three quick shots send Anders reeling, losing his grasp on her shoulders. His weight in her arms makes them both topple to the soggy ground. "Kara," is his last exhalation. She looks into his blank eyes. He has blood dripping off his lips.

His eyes slide shut and she watches her confusion fade with him. Releasing his empty body, she stands and runs screaming, racing toward them. If they wanted to kill her, they could have done it by now.

She can see his eyes--not dead; blank like a machine--when she's grabbed from behind, slamming into an arm so hard she loses her breath. She's being pulled backward, away from the trees, held off the ground in a vice-like grip around her chest, and even though she doesn't have to look to know it's Lee she's fighting against, she claws at his arms and reaches for the ground, begging to be freed. He won't let go of her. He just holds on.

She can see one of him standing outside the treeline, a clear shot. He's watching them go, watching her be dragged away. "I'll kill you!" she yells at him. "Do you hear me? I'll kill every last frakking one of you! Tell that to him! Tell him!"

She's dropped on the floor of the Raptor and the jolt startles her enough to hold her for a moment. The door's latched and they're in the air within seconds, leaving her plastered to the floor and her stomach rolling over, a feeling so familiar she curls into herself in pain. But her eyes land on Sam, unsecured against the opposite wall and his head lolling around free. She rises to her knees slowly and moves so she can hold his head in her lap, her hair falling across his brow like a curtain. And it's like they're alone, for the last time in forever, as they ride the FTL jump that takes them to safety.

* * *

The deck of _Galactica_ is disconcerting to her when she steps out on it, as it was the first time, years ago now, when she came here little more than a political figurehead. There are busy people in uniforms and coveralls hurrying around, and a hundred different voices--even more now, with reunited people celebrating their rescue and more unloading every minute--echoing in the wide open area, and strange pieces of delicate machinery scattered everywhere. Laura sighs, closes her eyes for a moment, and looks for peace. It is time to begin anew, and the same lessons might have to be learned over and over again. But when she opens her eyes, Bill Adama stands in front of her, and she smiles. She opens her mouth to speak his name, discards honorifics and formalities, and leaps into his arms. He chuckles warmly as he hugs her tight, and she can't help laughing herself. This is the relief she's been waiting for.

She feels Bill's attention shift over her shoulder and pulls away, quickly wiping her eyes. "Son," he says warmly. Lee nods perfunctorily, and begins reporting losses due to battle, the people they just couldn't find, and those who need immediate medical attention. His father waits for him to finish, though they can both see the bleakness of Lee's eyes.

"All things factored, I'd say the mission was a success," Lee concludes, with barely a flicker of satisfaction.

"But?" Bill prompts. Lee turns away. They all look over Lee's shoulder at the last Raptor, where four men are removing a stretcher. Standing around, some of the crew, either uniformed or dressed in civilian clothing, quiet down to observe the casualty. The stretcher is set up on wheels and the jolt sends Samuel Anders' face tilting toward them. Laura flinches. It takes her a moment to deal with the unfairness of his death, but when she looks up, the Adamas' eyes are on the open hatch of the Raptor. Kara Thrace steps, feet bare, onto the deck of _Galactica_. She doesn't look up at them. Her dirty blond hair is hanging across her face, but Laura doesn't have to see her expression to feel devastation. For the space of a few seconds, the entire deck seems to fall silent--perhaps waiting for Thrace's usual expressiveness. She just stands there, head bowed low in between her shoulders. The bright pattern of her shirt is incongruous with the dullness of the metal surroundings and there is blood on her hands.

"Oh my gods," Laura whispers, her hand to her mouth.

"Kara," Bill Adama brushes past her when he strides toward the girl. He takes both her arms in what looks like too strong a grip. Her head doesn't seem to raise so much as fall back, but she meets his gaze.

"Hi," she says. He pulls her fiercely into his arms. He puts a hand on the back of her head and holds it to his chest, his eyes extending a wordless demand of Laura and Lee Adama. But neither of them know what to say.

When he lets her go, her hands fall to her sides. Laura looks around the deck. "She needs a doctor," she says, because she can't think of anything else. "Did you--where's Doctor Cottle?" she asks Lee. He looks at her strangely.

She turns away from his concern. She doesn't need it. "Kara, did they take care of you?" she demands quietly.

Bill looks at her closely, and she hesitates. Kara's lips stick together as she replies slowly, "I was treated well." Bill gently tucks her loose hair behind her ears.

Kara raises her head, the hair falling back into her face, and licks her lips. "Take care of Anders?" she says without looking at his body.

"Of course."

Kara turns away. Her eyes land on Laura, and for a moment, Laura feels the condemnation she's been awaiting. She walks away from them, stiffly, and when Doctor Cottle falls into step beside her, she glances at him and keeps on walking up the deck.

* * *

Laura runs her hand along the cool metal walls of _Galactica_ as she walks. Bill Adama catches her at it, and raises an eyebrow. She smiles. "Getting used to my new home," she admits.

"Not if I have anything to do with it," he returns, pulling open the hatch. "We'll get you back on Colonial One yet." He's ushering her into the room, with Lee and Zarek already there, so she hesitates to answer him.

She's been asked to help with the debriefing. The colonists have all been asked to turn in a written account of their term on New Caprica. The sheer numbers mean someone with a central role has to sort through the statements that are missing details or require a personal interview.

There are tall stacks of octagonal folders on the table. Lee and Zarek are trying to put them into some order. "I think we should start with these. And these..." Lee points out stacks, tapping carefully so papers don't start sliding.

Laura grimaces. "Paperwork or Cylons," she says. "I'm not sure it's a fair trade."

They all laugh.

The job would take most of the day if they tried to read all of them; as it is they read in silence, occasionally jotting pertinent information on a chart, for more than an hour. Piles of folders start forming on the floor. Lee moves to sit by the wall near the hatchway with his legs stretched out in front of him, rubbing his eyes restlessly.

Eventually, Bill takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, weary expression matching his son. "We'll have someone go through the rest of these, but I think we've taken care of the most classified information." He drops the file he's holding onto the stack by his foot.

Laura yawns and tosses the folder she's holding back on the table. "I'm afraid I found very little I didn't already know, and all of it I'd already written down in my journal." She nods at her own folder, bulging with its makeshift contents.

Bill nods, his thoughts preoccupied. "We're still waiting on Kara Thrace's debrief," he says after a moment. "Doc Cottle tells me she's working on it."

"You haven't seen her?" Laura questions, surprised. She's stayed away from the infirmary herself, but she assumed Kara would want to see the Admiral. She's seen them interact as if they were family.

Bill pauses. "Briefly," and clearly it wasn't enough, if his expression is anything to judge by. His gaze hovers over Laura, and she thinks he's going to ask what happened to his girl. But he doesn't. "I'm sure it will all be in her debrief."

"She did see Anders killed right in front of her," Lee says, voice softened. "She was--very upset. Like a wild animal."

Laura sighs and looks away. Zarek is watching her with interest. He doesn't know, but he might have guessed. "I think we're all going to need some time, to adjust," she says slowly.

Bill doesn't waste any time. "Which is why we need to discuss the situation with the government. Baltar is obviously unfit for office. I'm willing to accept the petition signed on New Caprica as a people's mandate for impeachment. Under ordinary circumstances, that would leave Zarek as president." They all glance at Zarek. His face gives nothing away. "However, given that circumstances are less than ordinary, I think the situation deserves more consideration."

"Let me stop you there, Admiral," Laura speaks up. "I just want to make it clear before we go any further that I am not interested in regaining my office as president. At this time."

There is an uncertain pause in the room, but Bill Adama is never uncertain for long. He clears his throat. "You're sure about this?"

"I am," she says clearly. Slowly, the Adama men shift their eyes over to Zarek.

"Don't look so alarmed, gentlemen." Zarek smiles, watching them. "I have seen for myself how well suited cooperation is to our particular brand of government. I fully intend to work closely with the two of you."

Bill says simply, "That's good to hear."

"I hope you will be willing to work in an advisory capacity should the situation arise, Laura," Zarek adds.

"That's very generous of you," Lee remarks, toneless.

Zarek smiles back dryly. "Not at all. My only interest is what's best for the Fleet."

* * *

She spends four weeks in sick bay.

Doc Cottle gives her the good drugs at first, knocking her senseless long enough to let her body recover. She's vaguely aware of life around her: of sleeping alone in a narrow bed; her sticky, tangled hair brushed by gentle hands; the nauseating adjustment to space travel. Her body is dead to her, and for awhile it doesn't seem to matter. But he slowly brings her out of the fog, and in bits and pieces she becomes cognizant. He's waiting for her, watching, when she opens her eyes and reintroduces mind to memory.

Silently, he lights a cigar and sticks it between his teeth. "Hey, doc," she says, voice like gravel. She pushes herself up to her elbow. "Spare me one of those?"

He takes it out of his mouth and looks at it speculatively. "You can have this one. If you promise to stay in that bed."

"I've been in a bed too long, Doc. I need to get back to my Viper. Cylons to kill, missions to plan, Earth to find." She smirks, but the bravado is completely lost on him.

He sighs. "I'm going to help you get back on your feet, Thrace. There's no reason you shouldn't; there's no permanent damage, no broken bones, nothing any other woman hasn't bounced back from--"

She shifts. He pauses and hands her the cigar.

"But we're going to do this my way, and that means slow. It'll give you time to work on your debrief." He walks across the room and brings her back a clipboard. "I understand the Admiral is eager to hear what you know." He tosses it into her lap just as she awkwardly props herself up. "I'm required to make my own report, but we agreed that could wait until you filed your own."

Kara blows smoke his direction. "When can I hit the gym, Doc?"

He shakes his head. "Don't worry, you'll burn that extra fat off in no time, Captain. We're going to ease you back into physical activity. I can see you've been off your feet for some time."

She makes a face. "Yeah, well. That's me. Flat on my back most the time."

He gives her a skeptical look. "Admiral Adama has been by several times asking to see you."

She looks away.

"Commander Adama's been here a few times, as well. I've turned them away, but now it's your decision."

"I don't want to see anyone," she says. She feels tired and the cigar isn't setting well. She holds it off the edge of the bed. "I want to work on my report."

"Sure you do." Doc Cottle comes around the bed and takes his cigar from her hand. "Well, they'll live without you for a little while yet, no doubt." He raises an eyebrow, glances at the clipboard she hasn't touched, and leaves her alone.

But she does work on it. It isn't going to be precise, because she lost all sense of dates, but she writes everything down. She writes when she's not going through Cottle's rehab, earning every drop of sweat, and she writes when she's not getting her mandated eight hours of sedation. But in the end, there's not that much to say, after all, and it comes down to two entries: _impregnated by Cylon_ (late fall) and _gave birth to Cylon_ (summer).

Cottle lets her smoke whenever she wants, which compensates for a lot. She finishes the report the day she writes about Anders (killed by Cylon), signs her name--and call sign--and drops the pen on the bed. She walks to the treadmill she's only allowed to use supervised, and turns it on.

She runs for miles. Cottle's weaned her off most the drugs, and she can feel everything. She can feel the pain, and she can run through it. Finally.

When she stops, Cottle is standing in the hatchway, smoking. She's dripping with sweat as she catches her breath. "I'm ready for duty," she says, shoving back her hair.

He grunts. "Uh huh. Tell that to someone who hasn't been writing your charts." He pauses. "You might try the Admiral. Or his son. They're waiting."

She crosses her arms.

"They brought you liquor," he adds impassively.

He lets them in, and they're followed by Helo. Her gaze jumps past him like a Viper skipping rocks. She turns her stiff posture into a salute. "Sir. Ready to report for duty."

Lee and the Old Man hesitate at her words. She reaches out. "Thanks for this. I've been vice-free for way too long." She grins and unscrews the cap on the bottle, tipping it up for a drink. "My report's ready to be filed and Cottle's just given me medical clearance," she says, wiping her lips with a damp arm. "Haven't you, Doc?"

"Soon as you're cleaned up, Captain," he replies evenly.

Lee steps forward. "Here--thought you might need a new uniform." He holds up his arm, draped with clothing.

"You should give some thought to pacing yourself, Captain," Adama says. "You don't have to reclaim your post immediately. Ease back into life aboard ship."

"There's a game of Triad going on in the mess," Helo suggests, with a teasing grin. The familiarity slides into her skin and bites. She turns her head, meeting his gaze.

"I'd rather be killing Cylons," she answers. A few seconds pass slowly before she looks back at the Admiral. "I'm happy to go through my paces with the nuggets, sir. It's been awhile."

He nods slowly. "Alright, Starbuck," he replies quietly. "I'll be happy to see you back in the cockpit."

She nods shortly. "Thank you, sir."

She steps toward Lee, and pulls the blue uniform off his arm. He looks like he might step forward and detain her, but she cuts him off with a look. "Sir," she nods at them all in general, and walks to the head.

She shuts the door firmly, aware that there will be a discussion between the three of them and Cottle. She drops the uniform on the shelf by the shower and walks up to the mirror over the small sink. She stares at herself and dares the reflection to flinch. Her lips are white from tension. She closes her eyes and when she opens them, he's there--if he were standing behind her, he'd be looking over her shoulder into the mirror. She stares back at him in silence, so long and so furious that her cheeks flush and her eyes tear. Her hands tremble with the need to fight back. But she's the only one here.

Standing there, she pulls off her tanks. She looks at her torso before him in the mirror: old scars and tattoos and stretched skin. She runs her fingers over her stomach and she can feel the play of Leoben's fingers in the movement of her hair across her spine. She closes her eyes and since she can't see him and he isn't there, she reaches for the utility knife she hid on arrival from the landing bay. With her other hand she gathers her hair and pulls it away from the nape of her neck.

She opens her eyes with the cool metal held to her skin and he's still there, but he looks disappointed. Satisfied, she pulls it taut and makes the first cut. Golden hair drifts down her bare arms and clings to everything, creating jagged patterns on the wet floor under the sink.

 

**The end.**


End file.
